^ -i-. - . - ^ -. Oc , 



ART OUT-OF-DOORS 



ART OUT-OF-DOORS 



1bint0 on ©ooD ^aste in ©arOentn^ 



BY 

MRS. SCHUYLER' VAN RENSSELAER 



"A man shall ever see, that, when ages grow to 
civility and elegancy, men come to build 
stately sooner than to garden finely; as if 
gardening were the greater perfection." 

—BACON 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1893 



Copyright, 1893, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



TROW OIRECTOHY 
PRINTING AhO BOOKBINDING COVPANT 
NEW YORK 



TO 

THE FRIENDS IN BROOKLINE 
WHO TAUGHT ME TO CARE FOR THE 
ART 

WHICH STANDS NEAREST TO 
NATURE. 



PREFACE 



I HOPE that no one will open my little 
book thinking that its title means Every 
Man His Own Landscape Gardener." A 
book justifying this name could never be 
written, and none conceived in its spirit 
ought ever to be attempted. Practical 
treatises for artists' and students' use are, 
of course, another matter ; but it was not 
for me to try to add to the number of 
these. All I have wished to do is to say 
a friendly word to the public on behalf of 
gardening as an art— not attempting to speak 
of all its phases and problems, or to speak 
exhaustively of any among them, but simply 
to plead the cause of good taste by showing 
why this art should be practised and judged 
as are arts of other kinds. 

It is the one which has produced the 
most remarkable artist yet born in Amer- 
ica; and this is reason enough why all 

vii 



Preface 



Mr. Olmsted's fellow-countrymen ought to 
try to understand its aims and methods. 
But they ought also to try to understand 
them in the interests of self-protection; 
for to-day the art of gardening is practised 
much more often than any other, in ignorant, 
impulsive ways, by people who never stop 
to think that it is an art at all. 

M. G. Van Rensselaer. 

9 West Ninth Street, New York, 
March, 1893. 



viii 



CONTENTS 



PART 

I. 


The Art of Gardening . . 


PAGE 

1 


11. 


Aims and Methods . . . 


. 25 


III. 


The Home-Grounds . . . 


• 51 


IV. 


Close to the House . . . 


. 65 


V. 


Roads and Paths .... 


• 91 


VI. 


Piazzas 


. 121 


VII. 


Formal FIower-Beds . . . 


. 157 


VIII. 


Formal Gardening . . . 


. 155 


IX. 


A Word for Architecture . 


. 189 


X. 


Out-Door Monuments . . 


. 203 


XI. 


Cemeteries 


. 229 


XII. 


The Beauty of Trees . . 


. 241 


XIII. 


Four Trees . . . . . . 


. 271 



1 

ix 



Contents 

PART PAGE 

XIV. A Word for the Axe . . . 289 

XV. The Love of Nature .... 305 

XVI. A Word for Books .... 323 
XVIL The Artist 349 

APPENDIX 

Books on Gardening Art .... 385 



The author is indebted to the editors of Garden 
and Forest for permission to recast much material 
which first appeared in their journal. 



I 

The Art of Gardening 



" Laying out grounds may be considered a liberal 
art, in some sort like poetry and painting." 

— Wordsworth. 

It seemed to my friend that the creation of a 
landscape-garden offered to the proper muse the 
most magnificent of opportunities. Here indeed was 
the fairest field for the display of the imagination, in 
the endless combining of forms of novel beauty." 

—Poe. 



I 

HE Arts of Design are usually 
named as three : architecture, 
sculpture, and painting. It is 
the popular belief that a man 
who practises one of these is an artist, and 
that other men who work with forms and 
colors are at the best but artisans. Yet 
there is a fourth Art of Design which well 
deserves to rank with them, for it demands 
quite as much in the way of aesthetic feel- 
ing, creative power, and executive skill. 
This is the art which creates beautiful com- 
positions upon the surface of the ground. 

The mere statement of its purpose should 
show that it is truly an art. The effort to 
■produce organic beauty is what makes a man 
an artist ; neither the production of a merely 
useful organism nor of a beautiful isolated 
detail can suffice ; he must compose a beau- 
tiful whole with a number of related parts. 
Therefore, while he who raises useful crops 

3 




Art Out-of-Doors 



is an agriculturalist, and he who grows 
plants for their individual charms is a horti- 
culturalist, and he who constructs solid 
roads is an engineer, the man who uses 
ground and plants, roads and paths, and wa- 
ter and accessory buildings, with an eye to 
organic beauty of effect, is— or ought to be 
— an artist. 

All the Arts of Design are thus akin in 
general character and purpose. But they 
differ from each other in many ways, and in 
studying the peculiarities of gardening art 
we find some reasons why its affinity with 
its sisters is so commonly ignored. 

One difference is that it uses the same 
materials as Nature herself. In what is 
called the naturalistic " style of gardening 
it uses them to produce many effects which, 
under favoring conditions, Nature might 
have produced without man's aid. Then, 
the better the result, the less likely it is to 
be recognized as an artificial, an artistic, 
result ; the more perfectly the artist attains 
his end, the more likely we are to forget 
that he has been at work. 

I dare say there are many persons who 



The Art of Gardening 



do not know that a large portion of Central 
Park was created by Mr. Olmsted and his 
associates, in almost as literal a sense as any 
painter ever created a pictured landscape ; 
who do not remember the dismal, barren, 
treeless, half-rocky, and half-swampy waste 
which, less than forty years ago, occupied all 
the tracts below the reservoir ; who fancy 
that Nature made them beautiful with mead- 
ows, ponds, trees, and shrubs, with wood- 
land passages, and verdurous cliffs and hol- 
lows ; who think that all man has done has 
been to lay out the roads and paths, and 
build the terraces, bridges, and shelters. If 
they will read any contemporary description 
of the quondam aspect of these tracts, now 
so natural-looking in their beauty, and will 
then study the Park to-day and consider 
what difficulties must have attended the 
process which made it lovely to the eyes and 
•convenient for the feet and wheels of crowd- 
ing thousands, they may gain some idea of 
what landscape-gardening means ; they may 
understand why we who have studied it even 
from the outside rank it quite as high as any 
other art. 



5 



Art Out-of-Doors 



In naturalistic work such as this, I say, we 
may carelessly admire the result while for- 
getting that an artist wrought it. But, on 
the other hand, when an artist has essayed 
the formal, architectural style of garden- 
ing, and has disposed Nature's materials in 
frankly non-natural ways, his activity will 
be recognized, but, in our country at least, 
few will stop to consider whether it has been 
artistic or not. A more or less intelligent 
love for natural beauty is very common wdth 
us while good judgment in art is very rare. 
Therefore — and especially as we are unac- 
customed to thinking of art out-of-doors at 
all — we do not understand that in certain 
situations a formal design may be the best. 
Seeing that it is not Nature's work, or like 
Nature's work, we condemn it as a wilful 
misuse of good natural material. We recog- 
nize man's product, but we do not appreci- 
ate any beauty that it may possess. 

Again, gardening - art differs from all 
others in the unstable character of its re- 
sults. When surfaces are modelled and 
plants arranged. Nature and the artist must 
still work a long time together before the 

6 



The Art of Gardening 



true picture appears ; and when once it has 
revealed itself, day to day attention will be 
forever needed to preserve it from the alter- 
ing effects of time. It is easy to imagine, 
therefore, how often neglect or interference 
must work havoc with the best intentions, 
how often the passage of years must destroy 
or travesty the best results. 

Still another thing which prevents popu- 
lar recognition of this art is our lack of 
clearly understood terms with which to 
speak about it. Gardens" once meant 
pleasure-grounds of every kind, and ^-gar- 
dener ' ' then had an adequately artistic 
sound. But as the meaning of the first 
term was gradually specialized, so the other 
gradually came to denote a mere grower of 
plants. Landscape-gardener " was a title 
invented by the artists of the eighteenth 
century to mark the new tendency which 
they represented — the search for ' ' natural ' ' 
as opposed to formal" beauty; and it 
seemed to them to need an apology as sa- 
voring, perhaps, of grandiloquence or con- 
ceit. But as taste declined in England, this 
title was assumed by men who had not the 



Art Out-of-Doors 



slightest right, judged either by their aims 
or by their results, to be considered artists ; 
and to-day it is fallen into such disrepute 
that it is often replaced by ^^landscape-ar- 
chitect." French usage supports this term, 
and it is in many respects a good one. But 
its derivative, ^Mandscape-architecture," is 
unsatisfactory ; and so, on the other hand, 
is landscape-artist," although landscape- 
art " is a good general term. Perhaps the 
best we can do is to keep to landscape- 
gardener," trying to remember that it ought 
always to mean an artist and an artist only, 
but that this artist is not always called upon 
to design landscapes, either large or small, 
or even naturalistic gardens. 

The landscape-gardener, when his title is 
most appropriate, stands with the sculptor 
and the painter, in contrast to the architect, 
in that he takes his inspiration directly from 
Nature, working after the schemes and from 
the models which she supplies. But in some 
respects he stands quite alone. The painter 
works with actual colors, but with mere il- 
lusions of form, and the sculptor creates 

8 



The Art of Gardening 



forms but uses colors, if at all, in conven- 
tional and subordinate ways ; but the land- 
scape-gardener depends upon color and form 
in equal measure, and can never dispense 
with the one or the other. Then again, he 
takes from Nature not only his models but 
his materials and methods. His colors are 
those of her own palette, his clays and mar- 
bles are her rocks and soils, and his techni- 
cal processes are the same that she employs. 
He does not show her possibilities of beau- 
ty as in a mirror of his own inventing. He 
helps her in her actual efforts to realize 
them — he works in and for and with her. 

This fact limits and hampers him in cer- 
tain ways ; but, under fortunate conditions, 
it allows him to achieve what no other artist 
can — perfection. ^^The sculptor or the 
painter," writes a recent critic, observes 
defects in the single model ; he notices in 
many models scattered excellences. . . . 
To correct those defects, to re-unite those 
excellences, becomes his aim. He cannot 
rival Nature by producing anything exactly 
like her work, but he can create something 
which shall show what Nature strives after. 



9 



Art Out-of-Doors 



. The mind of man comprehends her 
effort and, though the skill of man cannot 
compete with her in the production of par- 
ticulars, man is able by art to anticipate her 
desires, and to exhibit an image of what she 
was intending." But the landscape-garden- 
er is Nature's rival, does create things like 
her own, can compete with her in perfect 
workmanship, for she herself works with 
him while he is re-uniting her scattered ex- 
cellences and obliterating her defects. What 
he cannot do she does for him, from the 
building of mountains and the spreading of 
skies to the perfecting of those ''particu- 
lars " which turn the keenest chisel and 
blunt the subtilest brush — to the curling of 
a fern-frond and the veining of a rose. Of 
course she will not everywhere do every- 
thing. If part of her work is in completing 
man's, part is in preparing for it, and he 
must respect the canvas and frame which she 
furnishes for his picture, the general scheme 
which she prescribes. He cannot ask her 
to build him mountains in a plain, to change 
a hill-side rivulet to a river, or to make trop- 
ical trees grow under northern skies. But 

lO 



The Art of Gardening 



he can always persuade her to produce 
beauty of some sort, if he is wise enough to 
know for what sort he should ask. 

This, of course, is true only in a theo- 
retic sense. Theoretically, there is no spot 
on earth an artist could not beautify. But 
some spots would demand a hfe of antedilu- 
vian length, and dollars as plentiful as the 
sands by the sea. Practically, the landscape- 
gardener, perhaps more than any other ar- 
tist, is limited by questions of time and 
money. And his partnership with Nature 
limits him as regards not only the sort, but 
the degree of beauty which he can achieve. 
Nature may suggest the same sort in two 
places, but if she prepares lavishly for it in 
the one spot and parsimoniously in the 
other, the best skill in the world may not be 
able to succeed as well here as there. Yet, 
I say, the landscape-gardener can always 
count upon that perfection in details which 
painter and sculptor never get j and his gen- 
eral effects as well as his details have the 
great advantage of being alive. A great ad- 
vantage indeed, for it means many beautiful 
results, in every piece of work instead of 
II 



Art Out-of-Doors 



merely one, and perpetual variation in each 
of the many. His aim is, in general, the 
same as that of the landscape-painter, who 
knows that the most potent factors in Nat- 
ure's beauty are light and atmosphere. No 
things in the world, not even the color and 
texture of the human skin, are so difficult to 
simulate, so impossible to imitate in paint as 
these. But to the landscape-gardener's pict- 
ures Nature freely supplies them, and not 
only in the one phase for which a painter 
strives, but in a thousand, changing them 
with each day of the year and each hour of 
the day. And with the passing days and 
seasons she changes also his terrestrial ef- 
fects, so that no part of his work is twice the 
same although, if rightly wrought, it is al- 
ways beautiful. 

But does not this partnership with Nature 
deprive the artist of the chance for self-ex- 
pression ? Art, after all, is not imitation 
but interpretation ; and interpretation im- 
plies the exercise of choice and inventive- 
ness, the revelation of personal thought. No 
artist can copy Nature, and if he could his 

12 



The Art of Gardening 



work would not be worth while. Its only- 
value would be historical, not artistic ; it 
would be prized only as the permanent rec- 
ord of a perishable fact. To make his re- 
sult worth while as art, he must put into it 
a portion of himself. 

If the landscape-gardener were indeed de- 
nied the chance to do this he could not be 
more than a skilful artisan. But he is not 
denied it. In fact, he cannot escape if he 
would from the necessity for self-expres- 
sion. It is not truer to say of him than of 
the painter or the sculptor that he copies 
Nature. Although they work merely with 
their eyes upon Nature, and he works in and 
with her, his aim is the same as theirs — 
to reunite her scattered excellences. The- 
oretically he could copy her in a very ex- 
act sense of the word; but practically he 
can copy little more than her minor details 
and her exquisite finish of execution. Com- 
position of one sort or another is the chief 
thing in art, and the landscape-gardener's 
compositions must be his own. Through 
them he must express his own ideals. If he 
is Nature's pupil he is also her master. 



13 



Art Out-of-Doors 



Nature," writes Aristotle, has the will 
but not the power to reahze perfection." 
Turn the phrase the other way and it is 
quite as true : she has the power but not 
the will. In either reading it means that 
man can aid and supplement her work. 
The landscape-gardener can bend her will 
in many ways to his own, although he must 
have learned from her how to do it. He 
cannot achieve things to which her power is 
unequal, but he can liberate, assist, and di- 
rect that power. He could even remove 
her mountains if the result were worth the 
effort ; and he can blot them out of his 
landscape by the simplest of devices— by 
planting a clump of trees and shrubs which 
she will grow for him as cheerfully as though 
she herself had sown their seeds. He can- 
not make great rivers; but he can make 
lakes from rivulets and cause water to dom- 
inate in a view which Nature had spread 
with green grass. He can even teach her to 
create exquisite details scarcely hinted at 
in her unassisted products. All florists' 
roses," for example, are not beautiful; but 
there are many in which Nature herself may 

14 



The Art of Gardening 



grudge man's skill its major share. In short, 
the landscape-gardener's task is to produce 
beautiful pictures. Nature supplies him 
with his materials^ always giving him vital- 
ity, light, atmosphere, color, and details, 
and often lovely or imposing forms in the 
conformation of the soil ; and she will see 
to the thorough finishing of his design. 
But the design is the main thing, and the 
design must be of his own conceiving. 

It is easy to see that this is true when 
formal, ^^architectural" garden-designing 
is in question. But it is just as true of nat- 
uralistic landscape - work. Nature seldom 
shows a large composition which an artist 
would wish to reproduce ; and if by chance 
she does, it is impossible for him to repro- 
duce it. Practical difficulties hedge him 
narrowly in, and appropriateness controls 
his efforts even more imperiously than those 
of other artists. His aim is never purely 
ideal ; he can never think of beauty, or even 
of fitness, in the abstract. He may practise 
with abstract problems on paper, but with 
each piece of his actual work Nature says to 
him : " Here in this spot I have drawn a 

IS 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



rough outline which it is for you to make 
into a picture. In many other spots I have 
shown you scattered beauties of a thousand 
kinds. It is for you to decide which you 
can bring into your work, and to discover 
how they may be fused into a whole which 
shall look as beautiful, as right, as though 
I had created it myself." Appropriateness 
must be the touchstone for particular features 
as for general effects. The artist's memory 
may be stored with endless beauties — with 
innumerable bits " of composition and 
good ideas for foregrounds, middle distances, 
and backgrounds, and with exhaustless ma- 
terials in the way of trees and shrubs and 
flowers. But not one of these can be used 
until he has considered vrhether it will be 
theoretically appropriate in this part of the 
world, in a scheme of this special sort, and 
whether, if it is, practical considerations will 
permit its use. 

Indeed, the true process for landscape- 
work is more imaginative than this. The 
true artist will not go about with a store of 
ready-made features and effects in his mind, 
and strive to fit some of them into the task 
i6 



The Art of Gardening 



of the moment as best he may. He will 
conceive his general idea in deference to the 
local commands of Nature; develop his gen- 
eral scheme as artistic fitness counsels j dis- 
cover the special features which are needed 
to complete it (considering which Nature 
will permit among those he might desire) ; 
and then, half unconsciously perhaps, search 
for memories of natural results which may 
teach him how to achieve his own. In edu- 
cating himself he w^ill have tried less to re- 
member definitely this and that particular 
natural result than to understand how Nat- 
ure goes to work to produce beautiful re- 
sults. He will have tried to permeate him- 
self with her spirit, to comprehend her aims, 
to learn what she means by variety in unity, 
by effective simplicity, by harmonious con- 
trasts, by fitnes-s of feature and detail, by 
beauty of line and color, by distinctness of 
expression — in a word, by composition. 
He will have tried to train his memory for 
general rather than for particular truths, and 
chiefly to purify his taste and stimulate his 
imagination ; for he will have known that 
while, in some ways, he is Nature's favorite 



17 



Art Out-of-Doors 



pupil, in others she treats him more parsi- 
moniously than the rest. She gives him a 
superabundance of models by the study of 
which he may make himself an artist ; but 
when, as an artist, he is actually at w^ork, 
she will never give him one pattern which, 
part by part, can guide his efforts. When 
w^e read of painters, we marvel most, not at 
the modern realist" working inch by 
inch from the living form, but at Michael 
Angelo on his lonely scaffold, filling his 
ceiling with forms more powerful and superb 
than Nature's — no guides at hand but his 
memory of the very different forms he had 
studied from life, and his own creative 
thought. Yet something like this is what 
the landscape-gardener must do every time 
he starts a piece of work. Certainly not 
each of his tasks is as difficult as a Sistine 
ceiling, but each, whether small or great, 
must be approached from an imaginative 
standpoint. 

There is another point to be noted. 
When we speak of the artist as taught and 
inspired by natural" scenes, we are apt 
i8 



The Art of Gardening 



to mean all those which have not been 
modified by the conscious action of art. 
We recognize a park-landscape as non-natu- 
ral ; but those rural landscapes in cultivated 
countries from which the designer of a park 
draws his best lessons, are also non-natural. 

If, in the idea of a natural state/' says 
an old English writer, we included ground 
and wood and water, no spot in this isl- 
and can be said to be in a state of nat- 
ure. . . . Wherever cultivation has set 
its foot — wherever the plough and spade 
have laid fallow the soil — -nature is become 
extinct.'' 

Extinct is, of course, too strong a word 
if we take it in its full significance. But 
it is not too strong if we understand it 
as meaning those things which are most 
important to the landscape-gardener ; the 
compositions, the broad pictures, 't)f Nature 
have been wiped out in all thickly settled 
countries. The effects we see may not be 
artistic effects, may not have resulted from 
a conscious effort after beauty ; but they are 
none the less artificial. They do not show 
us what Nature wants to do or can do, but 



19 



Art Out-of-Doors 



what man and Nature have chanced to do 
together. When EngHsh artists became dis- 
satisfied with the formal, architectural gar- 
dening of the seventeenth century, they 
fondly fancied they were learning from Nat- 
ure how to produce those aspects of rural 
freedom, of idyllic repose, of seemingly un- 
studied grace and charm which were their 
new desire. But in reality they were learn- 
ing from the face of a country which for 
centuries had been carefully moulded, tend- 
ed, and put to use by man. In some of 
its parts the effects of man's presence were 
comparatively inconspicuous. But of most 
parts it could be said that for ages not a 
stream or tree or blade of grass had existed 
except in answer to his efforts, or, at least, 
in consequence of his permission ; and it 
w^as these parts, and not the wilder ones, 
which gave most assistance to the landscape- 
gardener. 

Take, for example, the lawn, which is so 
essential a feature of almost every natural- 
istic gardening design. It is not true, as 
often has been said, that Nature never sug- 
gests a lawn. But it is true that she did 
20 



The Art of Gardening 



not suggest it to those Enghsh gardeners 
who developed it so beautifully. They 
were inspired by the artificially formed 
meadow-lands and forest-glades of the Eng- 
land of their time. 

Yet all the semi -natural, semi -artificial 
beauty of England would not have taught 
them how to make beautiful parks and gar- 
dens had they not been taught by their own 
imagination too. What they wanted to 
create was landscapes which should charm 
from all points of view, bear close as well 
as distant inspection, and be free from all 
inharmonious details ; and, moreover, land- 
scapes which should fitly surround the homes 
of men and accommodate their very various 
needs and pleasures. Such landscapes we 
never find in Nature, not even in cultivated, 
semi -artificial Nature. That is, while we 
can imagine a natural spot which would be 
an appropriate setting for a hunter's lodge 
or a hermit's cell, we can fancy none which 
would fittingly encircle a palace, a mansion, 
or even a modest home for a man with civil- 
ized habits and tastes. Every step in civil- 
ization is a step away from that wild estate 

21 



Art Out-of-Doors 



which alone is truly Nature ; and the fur- 
ther away we get from it the more imagina- 
tion is needed to bring the elements of use 
and beauty which Nature still supplies into 
harmony with those which man has de- 
veloped. 

\ The simplest house in the most rural situ- 
ation needs at least that a path shall be car- 
ried to its door ; and to do as much as cut 
a path in the most pleasing possible way 
needs a certain amount of imagination, of 
art. How much more, then, is imagination 
needed in such a task as the laying-out of 
a great estate, where subordinate buildings 
must be grouped around the chief one, and 
all must be accommodated jto the unalterable 
main natural features of the scene; where 
a hundred minor natural features must be 
harmoniously disposed ; where convenient 
courses for feet and wheels must be provided ; 
where gardens and orchards must be sup- 
plied, water must be made at once useful and 
ornamental, and every plant, whether large 
or small, must be beautiful in the sense of 
helping the beauty of the general effect ? 
The stronger the desire to make so artificial 



22 



The Art of Gardening 



a composition look as though Nature might 
have designed it, the more intimate must be 
the artist's sympathy with her aims and pro- 
cesses, and the keener his eye for the special 
opportunities of the site she offers ; but, also, 
the greater must be his imaginative power, 
the firmer his grasp on the principles and 
processes of art. 

23 



II 

Aims and Methods 



If the art of gardening is at last to turn back from 
her extravagances and rest with her other sisters, it 
is, above everything, necessary to have clearly be- 
fore you what you require. . . . It is certainly 
tasteless and inconsistent to desire to encompass the 
world with a garden-wall, but very practicable and 
reasonable to make a garden . . . into a charac- 
teristic whole to the eye, heart, and understanding 
alike.'' 

— Schiller. 



II 



F, now, we ask when and where 
we need the Fine Art of Gar- 
dening, must not the answer 
be, Whenever and wherever we 
touch the surface of the ground and the 
plants it bears with a wish to produce an 
organized result that shall please the eye ? 
The name we usually apply to it must not 
mislead us into thinking that this art is 
needed only for the creation of broad 
'^landscape" effects. It is needed where- 
ever vve do more than grow plants for the 
money we may save or gain by them. It 
does not matter whether we have in mind 
a great park or a small city square, a large 
estate or a modest door-yard : we must go 
about our work in an artistic spirit if we 
want a good result. Two trees and six 
shrubs, a scrap of lawn and a dozen flower- 
ing plants may form either a beautiful little 
picture or a huddled disarray of forms and 
colors. 




27 



Art Out-of-Doors 



If they form a picture, it will give us the 
same sort of satisfaction that we get from 
a good landscape on canvas ; indeed, it will 
do more than this, for the living picture 
will reveal new beauties day by day with 
the changing seasons, hour by hour with 
the shifting shadows. But if they form 
an inharmonious, unorganized mass, they 
will please us only by the beauty of this de- 
tail and that ; and even their details will be 
intrinsically less delightful than had they 
formed part of an agreeable general effect. 
Ruskin defines a good composition as one 
in which every detail helps the general 
beauty of effect ; but it may also be defined, 
conversely, as one which brings out the 
highest beauty of each of its details. 

A glance at any American town or sum- 
mer-colony of villas shows how deficient we 
are in artistic feeling when we deal with 
natural objects. The surroundings of our 
homes have not improved as rapidly as the 
homes themselves. Even in these we are 
still far from a general average of excellence. 
But I think we are on the right road to 
28 



Aims and Methods 



reach it. We have learned certain archi- 
tectural truths, and we respect them theo- 
retically even though we may often err in 
their application. We do not expect to 
build a good house without an architect to 
help us; we do not expect him to begin 
without a clear idea of the kind of house 
we want — of the special site it must occupy, 
the special needs it must fulfil, the special 
tastes it must meet. We are not content if 
he designs it by throwing together a number 
of pretty features regardless of harmony in 
the result. Nor do we buy our furniture 
bit by bit as passing whims dictate, or pile 
it casually about in our rooms. At least 
there are not so many of us who do these 
things as there were twenty years ago, and 
we are all aware that they ought not to be 
done. 

Yet they are just the things which almost 
everyone does outside his house. If he has 
*^no taste for Nature" himself, he puts his 
grounds into the hands of a gardener, with- 
out inquiring whether he has any qualifica- 
tions beyond a knowledge of how to make 
plants grow. And if he has such a taste 
29 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



himself, it means, in a great majority of 
cases, a mere love for being out-of-doors, 
for planting things, and for watching them 
develop. Or, at the most, it is apt to mean 
no more than a taste for Nature's individual 
products — a special love for trees, an inter- 
est in shrubs, a passion for flowers. The 
cases are very rare in which it means a taste 
at all analogous to what we understand by a 
taste for art ; that is, an appreciation of or- 
ganized beauty, a love for the charm of con- 
trasting yet harmonizing lines and masses, 
colors, lights and shadows ; a delight in in- 
telligent design, in details subordinated to a 
coherent general effect. Yet it is only such 
a taste as this which means a real feeling for 
Nature's beauty, and which can make the 
surroundings of our homes really beautiful. 

We have had some admirable landscape- 
gardeners in America ; and one of them, Mr. 
Olmsted, is the greatest living master of his 
craft, if not the very greatest who has lived 
since gardening art has dealt with landscape- 
effects at all. Naturally these artists are 
more often asked to manage large problems 
than small ones. But as yet they are not 

30 



Aims and Methods 



asked often enough to manage even very- 
important ones ; and when they are, their 
counsels are seldom rightly respected. They 
may be permitted to lay out a park or a 
country-place as they wish, but when once 
their backs are turned, how quick is park- 
commissioner or owner to retouch and spoil, 
or to neglect and likewise spoil their work ! 
How seldom does he ask himself what it was 
that his landscape-gardener really wanted to 
do, what was the general effect he wanted to 
produce, and then address himself to devel- 
oping and preserving it ! We seldom see 
any park or country-place, great or small, 
of which we can say, There is everything 
here that the eye desires, there is nothing 
that it could vrish away. Almost any pro- 
prietor would be surprised did we venture 
to criticise the view from his window upon 
the same principles that we should apply to 
a painting on his walls ; and yet, unless it 
will bear such criticism, it is not what he 
should have wished to make it. 

Of course, only an experienced and capa- 
ble artist is likely to arrange any extensive 
gardening scheme with success ; and even 

31 



Art Out-of-Doors 



the smallest scheme is likely to be more suc- 
cessfully planned and more rapidly perfected 
under an artist's eye. Yet if his help is un- 
attainable, there is no reason why the ama- 
teur should resignedly fall back upon hap- 
hazard ways of working. Any man can try 
to work in an artistic spirit, even if he can- 
not rival an artist's skill in execution. That 
is to say, no result made up of various ele- 
ments (even if those elements be the very 
fewest in number) can be good which is not 
good as a whole ; to make it good as a 
whole we must begin by having a clear idea 
of what sort of a whole we want ; and to be- 
gin with such an idea is to work in an artis- 
tic spirit, no matter how well or poorly we 
succeed in giving it beautiful expression. 
The scheme is the main point — the scheme, 
and the will to stick to it and not be tempt- 
ed by the beauty of individual things into 
frittering away or confusing its effect. 

Is it needful to say that working in this 
spirit we should not only work to better 
eventual effect, but with greater pleasure at 
the moment ? To have some appropriate 
and charming Httle picture in our minds 

32 



Aims and Methods 



which we want to realize ; to dispose our 
ground, and to choose and place our plants, 
with the requirements of this picture before 
us — this is to get the highest degree of pleas- 
ure from our planting. Nor can it be ob- 
jected that, when the picture is once ar- 
ranged, our work and pleasure are over un- 
less it can be perpetually tampered with and 
disarranged. To the artist in gardening the 
mutability of Nature is often a heavy cross, 
since he knows that when his result is con- 
sidered finished," he must leave it to 
others who will permit it (even if they do 
not aid it) to transform itself into something 
very different. But the proprietor or gar- 
dener who is trying on a modest scale to 
emulate the artist, finds in this very muta- 
bility an assurance of the permanence of his 
pleasure. Day by day and year by year he 
can watch the development of his picture, 
guard against Nature's disfiguring touches, 
welcome her happy accidents, and carefully 
correct and retouch the result himself while 
preserving its general integrity. And this 
work will surely be pleasant, for to the sci- 
entific satisfaction of the cultivator will be 



33 



Art Out-of-Doors 



added that highest of all intellectual delights, 
the consciousness of being a creator in the 
field of art. 

I do not like this use of the words ^' ar- 
tist " and amateur " into which I have 
been driven by our lack of clear descriptive 
terms. Rightly, an artist is anyone who 
produces good works of art, and no one 
else, and an amateur is an intelligent lover 
of art ; and it is a pity that we must twist 
the words to mean professional and non- 
professional practitioners of art, irrespective 
of the merit of their results. I have seen 
w^ork done by professional artists " in 
gardening which disgraces alike the dignity 
of Nature and the dignity of art ; and I 
have seen very artistic work done by men 
who have merely labored upon their own 
domains, and whose indisputable skill will 
never be at the public's service. 

It has amused and yet distressed me to 
find that some of these artists-in-private do 
not know that they are artists at all, and 
that most of their friends are astonished if 
the name is given them. They sometimes 

34 



Aims and Methods 



think that they are simply lovers of Nat- 
ure." They have chanced to learn their 
art, not in schools, or offices, or books, but 
face to face with the problem that Nature 
has set them, the materials that she has sup- 
plied, and the lessons that she and her 
worthy ministrants have explained in other 
places ; and they do not realize that they 
have studied at her knee with an artist's 
eye, and have used her brushes and chisels 
with an artist's hand. 

I visited not long ago the home of such a 
man. It is a large place, gradually turned 
into one by the union of two or three small 
places which, as first laid out, had no artis- 
tic relation to each other. Now it is the 
most beautiful suburban home I have ever 
seen. Its grounds have every artistic excel- 
lence — breadth, repose, simplicity, and fit- 
ness (these first of virtues in all works of 
gardening), harmony between part and part 
and between detail and detail, concentra- 
tion of interest, variety in unity, stimulus 
for the imagination ; and these excellences 
did not come by accident, for their names 
are perpetually on their creator's hps. 

35 



Art Out-of-Doors 



The principles of composition upon which 
he has worked in beautifying his grounds are 
the same as those upon which a good land- 
scape-painter works, as regards perspective 
and composition, color, lights and darks, 
and light and shadow ] and from the out- 
set he had just as keen a sense of the gener- 
al impression he wished to produce, the sen- 
timent he wished to convey ; and at each 
step just as true a knowledge of the right ex- 
pedients for compassing his ends. His trees 
have been planted, cherished, or cut down 
as they have helped or hurt the general ef- 
fect of his landscapes, each special landscape 
formed by his varied woods and lawns and 
shrubberies and glimpses of water being 
kept consistent with itself, harmonious with 
its neighbors, and yet individual in char- 
acter. His flowers have been placed, not 
where they would look well when seen only 
close at hand, but where they would tell " 
well in the broad pictures they adorn. A 
pond has been made just where a pond was 
needed to unite, yet, in a sense, divide, dif- 
ferent landscape-passages ; and every foot of 
ground in its vicinity is perpetually consid- 

36 



Aims and Methods 



ered, not for itself alone, but for the water's 
reflections also — even a great group of pop- 
pies high up on a bank at some distance 
from the pond growing just there in order 
that a red stain may show on the bosom of 
the water, near the yellow stain made by 
great clumps of hardy azaleas. No flower is 
allowed to stand where its color would not 
harmonize with adjacent things, and none 
which is intrinsically ugly in color. And 
this careful artist takes as much pleasure in 
finding that the sky-line of his trees is beau- 
tiful against a midnight heaven, and that 
their masses group well under the rays of the 
setting sun, as though his work had been 
done on canvas. 

I do not know how many of his visitors 
really appreciate the pictures he has thus 
created, but, I fancy, very few; and he him- 
self was surprised to be told that the lover or 
art would be more likely to appreciate them 
than the ''lover of Nature." He did not 
know that he was an artist ; he thought he 
was only a lover of Nature himself But all 
the years he has spent in studying his place, 
and the works of Nature and of men outside 



37 



Art Out-of-Doors 



his place ; all his careful energy ; all his 
wide botanical knowledge and practical ac- 
quaintance with the needs of trees and 
shrubs and grass and flowers, would not 
have helped him to his beautiful results had 
he not had the vision of an artist. 

This means that he had seen Nature with a 
particularly keen eye, had studied her details 
and effects with unwonted enthusiasm as 
well as knowledge, had loved best her most 
beautiful products, and had discovered, 
therefore, that the noblest of all beauties is 
organized beauty — beauty of general effect. 
Acting on this feeling, patiently and cau- 
tiously, yet boldly too, he has made of his 
domain a series of luxuriant pictures more 
perfect than any which Nature herself could 
paint. For, as I have said, no natural scene 
can fittingly surround the home of highly 
civilized people ; and, moreover, every nat- 
ural scene is marked by certain accidental 
blemishes — by signs of death and decay at 
the very least — which detract from the pur- 
ity, if not from the impressiveness, of its 
charm. Here, on the contrary, human 
comfort and convenience have been fully 

38 



Aims and Methods 



provided for in ways which do not detract 
from beauty ; and, while the eye asks noth- 
ing more, it can wish away no feature or 
detail from pictures as carefully tended as 
they have been carefully designed. 

This country-place is an example of crea- 
tive work in a very strict sense. Its beauty 
is almost altogether artificial. It does not 
even look natural to any trained eye ; it 
merely looks naturalistic ; and, in truth, 
none of its features, except in one outlying 
tract of woodland, stand and grow accord- 
ing to a scheme of Nature's devising. The 
soil has always been there, of course; but 
for two hundred years it had been put to 
various human purposes ; its surface has now 
been a good deal altered, and over much the 
greater part of it everything it bears has been 
planted by man. So this place stands at 
one of the extremes of landscape-gardening 
art : it is an example of what, under certain 
conditions, the landscape - gardener ought 
to do. 

But I have in mind another American 
country-place which is very beautiful too, 

39 



Art Out-of-Doors 



and which stands at the other extreme : it is 
an example of what the landscape-gardener 
ought sometimes to leave undone. It has 
not been made beautiful, and appropriate 
for human use, by acts of creation but by 
acts of elimination and preservation. The 
pictures it presents have not been composed 
with materials brought from other spots or 
grown from planted seeds, but have been 
carved out of a wild landscape by a judi- 
cious use of the axe alone. 

This place lies on the shores of Buzzard's 
Bay and covers some 1,500 acres. In this 
wind-swept and sandy region Nature grows, 
in very charming arrangements, a consider- 
able assortment of beautiful plants ; yet her 
nursery (as regards its larger products) seems 
very restricted if we compare it with those 
she has established in fertile inland districts. 
Of course this means that it is difficult even 
to cultivate here the majority of the plants 
upon which, in inland districts, an artist 
may depend for varied gardening effects ; 
where plants do not grow with ease they are 
always likely to look out of place if mian 
coaxes them to persevere ; and this is doubly 
40 



Aims and Methods 



true of spots where Nature has contented 
herself with few species, for such spots have 
an unusually distinct character of their own, 
an unusually well-marked individuality. 

In such spots what is an owner or his 
gardener likely to attempt ? Most often to 

make up," as he would say, for Nature's 
niggardhness — to supply the deficiencies of 
her limited nursery. He strives to repro- 
duce, on a soil unfit for the purpose and 
amid inappropriate surroundings, the varied 
and luxuriant effect of the average inland 
country-place. And, as a consequence, he 
misses the chance to get a good result which 
would be characteristic of the country-side 
where he has chosen to make his home, and 
gets only a bad imitation of results proper 
to very different regions. 

A true artist would go to work in quite 
another way. He would accept Nature's 
frame, outlines, and materials, and paint his 
pictures according to her local specifications. 
He would strive to re-unite her scattered 
excellences," but not all of them, and not an 
assortment chosen at random — only such as 
she herself mig-ht here have brous^ht harmo- 

41 



Art Out-of-Doors 



nioiisly together, and disengaged from encum- 
bering details, were she able to make pleasure- 
grounds instead of wild landscapes merely. 
He w^ould respect, preserve, heighten, accen- 
tuate, civilize, and yet poetize the natural 
character of the special site he had chosen, 
and thus would produce, not only a good 
w^ork of art but one with a special, local, 
personal charm, inimitable anywhere else. 

And this is just what has been done, by 
an artist-in-private, vv^ith the place I know 
on the shores of Buzzard's Bay. It lies very 
beautifully at the head of the bay, and its 
water-front, measured in and out along its 
little headlands and coves, is some six miles 
in length. When it came into its present 
owner's hands it was partly farm-land and 
partly thick second-growth forest, the woods 
fringing almost all the little beaches, and, 
after the lovely local manner, coming down 
to the very sand with a tangle of shrubs and 
vines. The house was already built. It is 
very ugly, and no attempt has been made to 
mitigate its ughness by planting. But it 
fortunately stands on just the right spot, and 
when a better one replaces it, a few native 



42 



Aims and Methods 



shrubs set around its foundations will be all 
that is needed to complete an harmonious 
picture of what a northern seaside home 
should be. 

On all this big estate no planting what- 
ever has been done except the planting of 
useful crops in places where they are seen 
only by those who may seek them out ; and 
nowhere upon it does there stand a single 
tree or conspicuous shrub which a gardener 
would call a '^fine specimen." Yet it is 
one of the most satisfying, one of the most 
artistic, country-places that I can call to 
mind. No artist would wish it other v/ise. 
Any lover of art w^ould know that it would 
be ruined by the least attempt at conven- 
tional gardening, the smallest importation 
of florists' plants. Thousands of trees have 
been cut down to form the many miles of 
road, and the roads are scientifically con- 
structed. But their curves through the 
woods, or along the water's edge, are as nat- 
ural-seeming as they are graceful ; and no 
hand is ever allowed to touch their borders 
except when the shrubs, which Nature grows 
here very lavishly, trespass in inconvenient 

43 



Art Out-of-Doors 



ways upon the roadbed. Many fields which 
once were cultivated now lie, hke lakes of 
tall grass and wild - flowers, encircled by 
arms of woodland. But very large clipped 
lawns have rightly been made around three 
sides of the house, as it stands on its little 
promontory, so that the magnificent encir- 
cling stretch of sea and distant shore may 
make its due impression of broad and peace- 
ful beauty. 

A few years ago the expanse now covered 
by these lawns was a tangled mass of stones, 
bushes, and small trees, with here and there 
a few trees of larger growth. The labor 
of clearing v/as great ; but the natural 
slopes were fine, and, as I have said, further 
labor in the way of planting was wisely 
shunned. In well-chosen positions some 
groups of oaks and pines and tupelos were 
left where Nature had put them, and as the 
winds of many winters had twisted and torn 
them ; and, seen against the background of 
blue sea, they are more delightful than the 
best gardeners' specimens could be. They 
are in place, in keeping, in harmony ; they 
are characteristic of this country-side ; they 

44 



Aims and Methods 



are fit^ and therefore they are rightly artis- 
tic in effect. The lawns themselves are no\. 
smooth and velvety like those of a Nev/port 
villa ; but they are evidently lav/ns and not 
meadows, and their comparative roughness 
is, again, entirely pleasing because entirely 
appropriate. 

And flowers? Somewhere, out of sight 
of the house and the main drives, near the 
kitchen-gardens, there is a garden for flo- 
rists' flowers. And elsewhere, too, there are 
flowers in plenty — on the slender shrubs 
w^hich grow beneath the trees, on the thick- 
ets of vines and bushes which border the 
open stretches of road, all through the 
grasses of the meadovvs, and all among the 
rocks which form the transition from lawns 
and copses to narrow beaches ; but these 
are all vv^ild flowers. Nature plants them, 
and Nature is allowed to grow them as she 
will ; they may not be roughly handled by 
man, and neither may their harmonious 
beauty be disturbed by any of mean's addi- 
tions. 

Here, too, where art has done nothing 
but disengage, clarify, and preserve, we And 

45 



Art Out-of-Doors 



the artistic merits which characterize the 
suburban place where art has planted, com- 
posed, created. Here, too, are breadth and 
miity of effect, repose, simplicity, and con- 
sistent character, and yet variety, mystery, 
contrasts, and surprises. Here, where no 
professed artist has worked, no botanical or 
horticultural knowledge has been needed, 
and no gardener at all is kept, the eye rests 
upon a work of art ; for Nature has been 
cajoled into doing real gardening work by 
the bribe of artistic non-interference on the 
part of man. 

Of course the creation of the one place 
has needed more knowledge, more time, 
more skill, and a more experienced taste 
than what I have called the disengagement 
of the other. But the second task was, in 
essence, just as artistic. Blundering execu- 
tion would have been almost as fatal here as 
there : and, besides, the mere conception of 
such a piece of work — the mere choice of 
aim and method — gave proof of remarka- 
ble good taste. It is easier to understand 
that much must be done than that little may 
be done and yet a good work of art result ; 
46 



Aims and Methods 



and it is a great deal easier, whatever one's 
scheme, to work it out too far than sternly 
to hold one's hand at just the right moment. 
I have said that in a work of gardening art, 
as in a work of architectural art, the plan, 
the scheme, the fundamental idea, is the 
main thing, and that this Nature never can 
supply ; and I have also said that most peo- 
ple, in their gardening, think more of every- 
thing else than of a plan. But for this sea- 
shore country-place the owner conceived a 
very beautiful plan ; he has consistently ad- 
hered to it while letting Nature do everything 
else ; and the outcome is a singularly suc- 
cessful, a singularly individual and personal 
work of art. ^^I think," wrote Addison, 
there are as many kinds of gardening as of 
poetry." A very beautiful idylhc poem has 
been written on the face of the suburban 
country-place which I have tried roughly 
to describe. But Addison's further words 
might v>^ell be affixed to the gate-lodge of the 
place on Buzzard's Bay : You will find 
that my compositions in gardening are al- 
together after the Pindaric manner, and run 
into the beautiful wildness of Nature with- 



47 



Art Out-of. Doors 



out affecting the nicer elegancies of art/' 
Too often, on similar sites, these nicer ele- 
gancies are sought, and, mingling with the 
wild Pindaric local strains which they can- 
not extinguish, produce an inartistic, be- 
cause an inharmonious, effect. 

I have cited these two cases to show that 
exceptional men, if they take time and 
trouble, if they work slowly, carefully, and 
lovingly enough, may master difficult prob- 
lems in the art of gardening. And, of 
course, what can be done on a large scale 
can more easily be done on a small scale. 
Nevertheless, it must not be thought that I 
mean it is wise, on general principles, to 
dispense vrith professional help. I mean 
just the opposite. I have cited these two 
cases for encouragement ; now, for right in- 
struction, I will say that they are the only 
two I have ever seen vrhere, without profes- 
sional help — or at least without the advice of 
men well experienced in artistic composition 
of some sort — an amateur has laid out his 
domain with entire success. Well-designed 
large country-places, devoid of conspicuous 

48 



Aims and Methods 



blemishes, are a great deal rarer than well- 
designed large buildings ; and we can find 
twenty good villas or cottages for one small 
stretch of ground which is in any degree an 
artistic picture. The more a man loves, in 
an unreasoning way, the w^orks of Nature, 
the more likely he is to think that he can- 
not have too many of them in his grounds, 
and no error is so fatal as this to a good 
general result. And the stronger his horti- 
cultural passion, the more apt he is to care 
about novelties and eccentricities — -about 
conspicuous plants as such ; and the profuse 
use of these gives a last fatal touch to the 
inartistic disorder of the usual overcrowded 
domain. 

No ; we want artists to help us with our 
grounds as much as to help us with our 
houses ; and we want them most of all be- 
fore our houses have been founded or even 
planned. But when we cannot have them 
we should try, in a reasoning, intelligent, 
systematic, and therefore artistic way, to 
conceive what their aims would be and to 
follow out their mxCthods. We should de- 
cide upon some scheme of design, whether 



49 



Art Out-of-Doors 



our acres be many or our square rods be 
few; make sure that, given our special site 
and our special tastes, it is a good scheme ; 
and then consider our plants and other ma- 
terials, not chiefly for their individual 
charms, but for their value as factors in the 
general picture we desire. I fear I shall say 
this very often; but if it could be said a 
hundred times a year to every owner of 
American ground, it would be a good thing 
for all the people who live in America. 
SO 



Ill 

The Home-Grounds 



" The first law of a painting and of a picture on 
the soil is 10 be a whole. . '. . Without princi- 
ples and without discernment one never attains ve- 
ritable beauty." 

— Edoiiard Andre. 

" That is best which lieth nearest, 
Shape from that thy work of art." 

— Longfellow. 



Ill 



HE union — a happy marriage it 
should be — between the house 
beautiful and the ground near 
it," says a recent English 
writer, ^' is worthy of more thought than it 
has had in the past ; and the best ways of 
effecting that union artistically should in- 
terest men more and more as our cities 
grow larger, and our lovely English land- 
scape shrinks back from them." 

This writer is an enthusiast for natural " 
gardening methods, so Ave are not surprised 
to find that, in speaking of the ground near 
a country-house, he should say little about 
harmonizing it with the house itself, but 
much about uniting it agreeably with the 
landscape beyond its own borders. He 
calls this ground ^'the garden," which is 
its right old-fashioned name. But, in Amer- 
ica at least, garden " is most generally 
understood as meaning very small grounds, 

53 




Art Out-of-Doors 



or an enclosure of some sort where plants are 
grown chiefly for the sake of their own in- 
dividual beauties; and so, with us, 'Miome- 
grounds " is a better term when we want to 
speak more broadly. 

Speaking, then, of all the grounds near 
the house, this Englishman explains that 
there are situations, as on the hill-sides of 
Italy, where the character of the spot pre- 
scribes a formal, semi-artificial kind of treat- 
ment. But, he continues, " the lawn is the 
heart of the true English garden, and as es- 
sential as the terrace is to the gardens on the 
steep hills;" and, in general, these words 
are true for America as well. In fact, there 
is less need in America than in England to 
protest against the making of formal gardens 
where naturalistic lawns with appropriate 
framings and backgrounds of foliage should 
exist. It would be difficult to discover any 
American homes where on level ground the 
terrace-walls cut off the view of the landscape 
from the house, and, on the other hand, the 
house from the landscape." Nevertheless, 
there are certain errors in garden-design 
into which we are as apt to fall as the Eng- 

54 



The Home-Grounds 



lish, and we should be doubly anxious to 
avoid them, for, it seems, our architects are 
succeeding better than the English in creat- 
ing that house beautiful" which must be 
the centre of the complex ultimate picture. 
If the taste of the writer whom I quote can 
be trusted, ^* most of the houses built in our 
time ' ' in England ^ ^ are so bad that even 
the best garden could not save them from 
contempt ; ' ' while, although we often build 
bad houses too, many of our country -homes 
are so very good that we think with a pang 
how much better yet they would be were 
their home-grounds properly planned and 
planted. 

How to plan and plant such grounds is a 
most interesting question, although, of course, 
varying with each individual case, it cannot 
be approached theoretically except in a very 
general way. Let us, however, suppose that 
a house has been advantageously placed and 
attractively designed, that it looks out upon 
a beautiful landscape, and that the interven- 
ing space is of such extent and character that 
it can be made an harmonious link between 
house and landscape, giving the house a 

55 



Art Out-of-Doors 



fitting environment when it is seen from a 
distance, and the landscape a fitting fore- 
ground when it is seen from the house. The 
two questions then are, How to plant, and, 
What to plant. 

As regards the former, one cannot answer 
theoretically except by saying that there 
should, if possible, be a wide extent of lawn 
or lawns to give repose and unity to the 
picture, with surrounding plantations, varied 
in mass and sky-line, to enframe the lawns 
and connect them with the landscape ; that 
open outlooks should be left (but not too 
generously) for the contemplation of the 
aiost beautiful parts of the background ; that 
,ill disagreeable objects should be carefully 
Uxasked from sight ; and that roads and 
walks should be as few and inconspicuous as 
convenience will allow. If a good land- 
scape-gardener is employed these arrange- 
ments will be planned and their preliminary 
portions will be executed without much trou- 
ble to the owner. But in settling the ques- 
tion what to plant in completing them, the 
landscape-gardener, in America as in Eng- 

56 



The Home-Grounds 



land, sometimes seems as much in need of 
guidance as the owner ; and even when his 
ideas are entirely right, the owmer too often 
interferes with their execution or adds in- 
harmonious details of his own as the years 
go by. 

Our English author is partially correct 
when he says that most people who care for 
gardens (still taking the word in the wide 
sense he gives it) suppose that they are made 
for plants, and that if a garden has any 
use it is to treasure for us beautiful flowers, 
trees, and shrubs." But this idea of a gar- 
den's function is much too narrow. The 
home-grounds form, beyond question, a place 
where beautiful plants should be fostered. 
But they should also form an entity, a com- 
position, a picture which will be beautiful 
as a whole and in harmony with its sur- 
roundings. And, however well planned, 
such a composition, such a natural picture, 
may be shorn of beauty and rendered pain- 
fully artificial if its elements, big or small, 
are injudiciously selected. 

Our Englishman's decision is that ^^the 
true use and first reason" of the home- 



57 



Art Out -of -Doors 



grounds is to keep and grow for us plants 
not in our woods, and mostly from other 
countries than our own." But this, it seems 
to me, is a very mistaken decision. I quote 
it simply because so many American garden- 
ers and amateurs consciously or instinctively 
adopt it, and, so doing, usually spoil the 
home-grounds which they are anxious to 
adorn. 

The true use and first purpose of the 
home-grounds is to grow for us beautiful 
plants of such a kind that their right associa- 
tion will make a beautiful whole, beautifully 
in keeping with the house on the one hand 
and with the outer landscape on the other. 
In fitting them for this purpose we are at 
liberty to get our trees, shrubs, and flowers 
where we will, provided we introduce none 
which, by a discordant note, will mar that 
general effect which must be determined by 
soil, situation, and climate, and by the char- 
acter of the house and of the local landscape. 

To be harmonious, and therefore beauti- 
ful, grounds over which we see the Berk- 
shire Hills or the valley of the Hudson must 

58 



The Home-Grounds- 



evidently be American gardens, just as those 
in the valley of the Thames must be English, 
and those on the southern shore of France 
must have the mixed, semi-tropical character 
peculiar to the Mediterranean coast. To 
secure this local character, local plants are 
essential as a foundation ; and then, to give 
variety, interest, and the true garden-like air 
and charm, exotics should be mingled xvith 
them. But these exotics should never be 
chosen for their rarity or novelty alone, or 
even for their intrinsic beauty ; and still 
less, as is too commonly the case, should 
they be chosen for their mere conspicuous- 
ness. First of all they should harmonize 
with the other plants about them, and there- 
fore the novice may well hesitate before 
dipping deeply into those stores of foreign 
plants which are now so vast and varied and 
accessible. His choice will not be narrow, 
if, in addition to native plants, he selects 
such as have come from lands with climates 
akin to our own. 

In using these last he will be following 
Nature's own example. Here in America 
she does not confine herself to growing plants 

59 



Art Out-of-Doors 



which were originally American. She takes 
up vegetable immigrants as hospitably as our 
civilization takes up human immigrants, and 
assimilates them as quickly and naturally. 
Who would suspect the white willow or the 
barberry in New England, or the pawlonia in 
the woods of ^laryland, to be an exotic ? Or 
the field-daisy which fills all our meadows ? 
And who sees anything inharmonious or 
strange in the aspect of the ailanthus-trees 
which, mingUng with native elms, shade the 
rustic streets of Nantucket ? Nature chooses 
which exotics she will grow for what we may 
call scientific reasons, but the artistic effect 
of her results is invariably good. And m.an 
should learn from her how to make a similar 
choice, taking a wider liberty, of course, 
when he is planting a garden than when he 
is planting a forest, but never forgetting 
that, in gardens such as we have now in 
mind, he should grow together only such 
plants as will look well together. There are 
exotic flowers which look as natural, as ap- 
propriate in a garden, as the marguerite of 
Europe looks in our fields. But there are 
others which seem entirely out of place as 

60 



The Home-Grounds 



parts of an American garden if it has any 
design — any character — at all. 

I do not mean to disparage the cultiva- 
tion of rare or novel or conspicuous plants, 
whether native or exotic. It is a delightful 
task to collect plants for their own sakes, 
without any reference to their relation with 
the surrounding scenery. But collections 
should be arranged on spots specially set apart 
for them, where they will not injure the main 
picture formed by the general environment of 
the house and the encircling landscape. As 
regards the grounds — the ' ' garden ' ' in its 
wider sense — they will assuredly be most 
beautiful, interesting, and enjoyable when 
both native and foreign plants have been 
used in tasteful combination. But, if con- 
fined to one of these classes, it would be 
much worse to choose ^'plants not in our 
woods and fields and mostly from countries 
not our own," than to choose our own. 
Using native plants alone, one would miss a 
thousand chances to secure a delightful va- 
riety. But using the others alone, there 
would be the certainty of an inharmonious 
whole — a garden filled with beautiful plants 
(I 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



which would not be a beautiful garden, or an 
appropriate environment for the house, or a 
suitable foreground for the outer landscape 
of American forest, hill, and stream. 

I do not know that I should say so con- 
fidently that a planter may be very chary in 
his use of exotic plants, or even dispense 
with them altogether, were I writing in 
England. Our country is incomparably 
richer in forms of vegetation than is any Eu- 
ropean land, and especially in those larger 
forms which are the planter's chief reliance 
vrhen he works on an extensive scale. To 
say this we need not match our whole big 
fatherland against a smaller European one, 
or even against the whole of Europe. When 
the first explorers landed, when no seeds had 
been sown here but those of Nature's sow- 
ing, these Atlantic and Middle States would 
have seemed very rich if matched against 
all of Europe. Were the Englishman of to- 
day confined to his woods and fields, de- 
prived of what ours have sent him, he would 
be poor indeed. But did we appreciate the 
half of our treasury, we should see how lit- 
tk we really need Europe or Asia or Africa 

62 



The Home-Grounds 



to help us to furnish forth our works of land- 
scape-art. 

Yet, although we do not actually need 
them, their help is very welcome if we take 
it in proper fashion. We should add other 
things to ours without overwhelming ours 
and thus selhng our birthright of individual- 
ity for what, alas, too often proves a mess of 
motley herbage ; and we should call upon Eu- 
rope and Eastern Asia, akin in climate to our 
Eastern America, rather than upon the trop- 
ics, and those other lands where vegetable 
types have developed in harmony with natural 
conditions that are not our own. We want 
American gardens, American landscapes, 
American parks and pleasure-grounds, not 
the features of those of a dozen different 
countries huddled together into a scene which 
has no simplicity, harmony, or unity, and 
therefore no character — no likeness to Nat- 
ure, and therefore no artistic worth. 

63 



IV 

Close to the House 



"The Walls enriched with Fruit-trees and faced 
with a covering of their leafy extensions ; I should 
rather have said hung with different Pieces of Nat- 
ure's noblest Tapestry/' 

—James Hcrvcj'. 



IV 




jARMONY between the home- 
grounds and the outer land- 
scape will not alone suffice to 
make a country-place a beauti- 



ful picture. To complete this picture there 
must be harmony between the grounds and 
the house itself. And all the more distant 
devices of the gardener will not effect this 
unless its walls seem integrally united to 
Mother Earth. 

With the architect as he develops a de- 
sign appropriate to the given situation and 
the owner's needs, or as, in consultation 
with the landscape-gardener, he determines 
the site of the house, we are not just now 
concerned. But it is also the architect who 
must take the first step toward well uniting 
walls and ground if the planter is afterward 
to j)6rfect the union. Sometimes he must 
prepare for terraces or other semi -architec- 
tural accompaniments : and always he must 



Art Out-of-Doors 



seize upon every peculiarity of the site 
which can be used to give his building the 
look of belonging just where it stands — to 
make it appear as though it could not be 
moved anywhere else without detriment to 
its own effect, 

Xot many years ago we thought broken, 
irregular sites undesirable, and, when they 
could not be avoided, often levelled and 
smoothed them that the house-foundations 
might be laid with mechanical symmetry. 
But of late our architects have realized that 
such sites are apt to be the best of all if 
thought and skill are brought to bear upon 
them, giving a chance for architectural in- 
dividuality as well as for an integral union 
of architectural and natural features. 

When the slopes of an irregular site are 
gentle and devoid of rocks, a beautiful re- 
sult can be achieved by respecting their un- 
dulations, laying more or fewer courses of 
foundation-stones according as they rise or 
fall, and bringing the grass up to the base 
of these courses in an uneven, billowy, yet 
not too broken line. Richardson often did 



68 



Close to the House 



this, and such buildings as his Public Library 
at Quincy, Massachusetts, which faces on a 
small and very gently modelled lawn, owe 
much of their charm to the resultant look of 
being firmly rooted in the ground. When, 
on the other hand, the site is rocky, and 
local stone can be used, rough-faced, for 
the foundations, the result may be just as 
charming while a great deal more striking, 
as we see in another work of Richardson's 
— the Town Hall at North Easton, Massa- 
chusetts, where the rock-like turret seems 
almost to have grown naturally from the 
rocky hill - side. The beautiful Beverly 
shore, to the northward of Boston, runs out 
into little rocky promontories, divided by 
coves with tiny white beaches ; and on 
these promontories and the sloping banks 
of the coves excellent use has been made of 
natural irregularities of site, each demand- 
ing a fresh architectural solution, but each 
permitting a final picture where the house 
seems indeed to belong in the most intimate 
way to the special spot it occupies. If such 
sites as these had been levelled, the house 
would have been injured as greatly as the 
69 



Art Out-of-Doors 



grounds around it. Now the two are in 
harmony ; each helps the effect of the other, 
and the general picture seems all the more 
home- like because so very individual. 

But even in such cases as these Nature 
merely prepares the w^ay, the architect takes 
the first step, and then, most often, the 
planter must carefully finish their begin- 
nings. Only in very rough little houses, built 
in very wild localities, can the natural sur- 
roundings rightly be left untouched, and 
natural forces be trusted to add all needful 
details of completeness to the pretty picture. 
And when a house stands on a flat, common- 
place site, then the planter's aid is trebly 
needful if it is to look as though it really be- 
longed there — if it is not to have a casual in- 
consequent air, like a box standing upon a 
floor. Then, if there is a difl'erence of level 
between the actual site and the adjacent 
grounds, some simple arrangement of terraces 
may well be used. But this alone will not 
suffice. Terraces or no terraces, flat sites or 
broken ones, the efl'ect will be best when the 
planter has most intelligently assisted the 
architect. 



70 



Close to the House 



If a site is very broken and rocky, and if 
the architect has done his work well, the 
planting of a few vines against his walls 
may often suffice to bring them into a close 
enough union with jNIother Earth. It is 
a pity, however, that when vines alone 
are thus relied upon, a single kind should 
usually be chosen for repeated planting. 
A little thought given to the selection of 
different kinds which harmonize yet con- 
trast would produce more beautiful efiects. 
It is well on a city house to let a single 
plant do the whole work of clothing the 
walls. Here there is no question of uniting 
house and site, of making a naturalistic ef- 
fect j and we do not want picturesque vari- 
ety on a street facade, even though it be 
a very broad one. A symmetrical archi- 
tectonic effect should be preserved ; and for 
this a wisteria trained on two or three wires 
reaching to the roof, or a closely clipped 
covering of Japanese ivy, is the best re- 
source. But on a country house of the ir- 
regular, picturesque kind which must be 
built on a broken site, draperies composed of 
a single creeper are undesirably monotonous. 

71 



Art Out-of-Doors 



Suppose,, for instance, that on a broken 
site you have a house which shows a long 
main wall, of rough stone belovr and of 
wood above, with at one end a projecting 
turret where the stone-work has been car- 
ried to a higher point, and at the other 
end a piazza with sturdy posts and a low 
sloping roof. Clothe such a house all in 
creepers of one sort and you do your best 
to obliterate the architect's accentuations, 
and to turn what should be a strikingly pic- 
turesque into a monotonous picture. But 
plant Japanese ivy against the long recessed 
wall ; let Virginia - creepers drape, more 
loosely and boldly, the projecting turret ; 
in the angle between the turret and the 
long wall set a trumpet-creeper whose dark 
glossy foliage will contrast vrith the light- 
er tone of the Japanese Ivy and the me- 
dium tone of the turret-vines ; let honey- 
suckles and clematis twine around your 
piazza-posts, and then you will have dra- 
peries which will be beautifully varied in 
themselves and vrill accent, not conceal, 
the architect's intentions, while bringing 
his features into closer harmony with 

72 



Close to the House 



one another and the ground which bears 
them. 

This is only a typical suggestion , exactly 
fitted, perhaps, for not one house in a thou- 
sand. But although sites, exposures, cli- 
mates, and the colors and materials of house- 
walls vary much, there is a great treasury 
of vines and creepers to draw upon, and 
in few cases need a planter be at a loss for 
draperies of entire appropriateness. The 
important things are, to know just what your 
house needs, and to know just how the differ- 
ent creepers look when they are growing on 
a house, and under just what conditions eacii 
one will grow best. 

Each vine, each creeper, has a special 
character of its own, determined by its 
habit of growth as well as by the character 
of its foliage and flov/ers. Wisteria, for ex- 
ample, will not cling to a flat vrall ; it needs 
some other support. It will clamber very 
high v/ith the aid of a single wire, but, as it 
then looks, is best in place on a city house 
or on a country house of formal design. On 
picturesque houses it looks better if trained 
over a trellis-vv'ork of wires against a wall, 

73 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



or if allowed to cover a balcony, forming 
irregular masses which are scarcely more 
charming when in profuse flower than later, 
when the luxuriant fohage is fully developed. 

The Virginia-creeper adapts itself in the 
most versatile way to such supports as it 
may find, now twining around a fence or 
lattice and throwing out long free streamers, 
and now spreading a flat yet gracefully 
flowing mantle over wide, plain walls. It 
stands midway in habit between the wisteria 
and the Japanese ivy — less massive than the 
former, less delicate and closely clinging 
than the latter, which adheres to the 
smoothest walls almost as though each of 
its leaves had been carefully spread out and 
fastened in place. A judicious union of 
these three vines is far more beautiful on a 
country house than either one alone could 
be, if for each that spot is chosen where its 
manner of growth will look most appropri- 
ate. And, if the climate permits the use of 
English ivy, this will be an invaluable ad- 
dition, not only because it is green in win- 
ter as well as summer, but because it gives 
the planter a still darker note of color for 

74 



Close to the House 



the accentuation of his harmony, and still 
bolder and more varied masses of foliage. 

There are a multitude of other hardy 
vines Avhich ought to be commonly em- 
ployed — climbing roses and honeysuckles, 
for example, clematis of many kinds, and 
trumpet - creepers, the bitter - sweet, the 
poison - ivy, the Dutchman's - pipe, and our 
wonderfully beautiful wild grapevines. Not 
all of them will grow in all places, or in all 
ways, and not all will look well together ; 
but each has its special beauty, and they 
offer endless possibilities for beautiful com- 
binations. The substance and color of the 
house must of course be considered, as well 
as their own peculiarities. The splendid 
foliage - masses of the trumpet - creeper and 
its brilliant clusters of orange-floAvers look 
better against gray wood than against red 
brick, while brick is the more favorable 
background for Japanese ivy, both in sum- 
mer when it shows tints of light yellowish 
green, and in winter when, against a con- 
trasting color, its delicate traceries of gray 
branchlets look as though etched by a skil- 
ful human hand. 

75 



Art Out-of-Doors 



I do not speak of annual vines in this 
connection, for the garment Avhich is to 
unite the walls of the house with the soil 
should be woven of lasting materials. Other- 
wise the work will never be thoroughly well 
accomplished, and, such as it is, will have 
to be done over again each year. Annual 
creepers may be planted among those wdiich 
are permanent, for the sake of still greater 
variety, but they should not be relied upon 
as a main resource. 

Nor, when the hardy vines are once 
planted, should they be left to grow in 
their own wilful way. A house is not like 
a cliff or a ruin or a blasted tree, where the 
wilder the growth of the creeper, the more 
charming and appropriate is the effect. It 
is (or should be) a work of art to which all 
its immediate surroundings are kept subor- 
dinate ; and its garment of verdure should 
be adapted to its form, as are the garments 
of a gracefully draped figure. Its prime 
end is to give its owners comfortable shel- 
ter ; so, no matter how great its pictur- 
esqueness, it should always look orderly and 
well tended ; its vines should be pruned and 

76 



Close to the House 



trained with sympathetic discretion, not al- 
lowed to run wild, to hang in ragged gar- 
lands, and overgrow porches and windows, 
yet not forced into unnatural stiffness or 
deprived of their characteristic manners of 
development. 

Nor should they ever be allowed to cover 
the walls entirely, for the walls, not the 
creepers, are the main concern. Their archi- 
tectural character should be kept distinct ; 
and not alone for the sake of one pleasing 
feature and another, but especially for the 
sake of that effect of unity between house 
and grounds which is so important. It is 
surely a mistake to build a solid lower story 
of stone or brick, and then allow it to be en- 
tirely hidden, even during six months of the 
year. The beauty of the architectural work 
is lost, and, besides, the effect of upper 
stories apparently based on a substructure of 
fluttering leaves is most unfortunate. The 
house does not seem to be rooted in the 
ground; it seems to stand upon an unstable 
bank of green. Vines enough may be grown 
to beautify the walls and unite them well with 
the ground, and yet spaces be reserved, below 



77 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



as well as above, where the constructed sur- 
face shall appear — spaces which will indicate 
the general character of the walls, show where 
the ground ends and they begin, and assure 
the eye of their stability. 

It is a good plan, also, to train some vines 
so that they shall spread over portions of the 
ground, and thus make the transition between 
the soil and the walls seem still more inti- 
mate and natural. A mass of honeysuckle, 
for instance, running out boldly over rock 
or grass for a little distance, makes a very 
charming effect, and its bloom will seem even 
more profuse in this than in an upright po- 
sition. 

But in the majority of cases vines alone 
should not be depended upon to mask the 
junction of walls and soil. Unless very ir- 
regular rocks form the foundation upon 
which the walls are set, they will need more 
massive and spreading foliage at their base. 
The fact is generally perceived to-day, for 
vre seldom find a suburban or country house 
v\'here plantations have not been made close 
to the walls, at least along some part of their 

78 



Close to the House 



course. Unfortunately, however, they are 
usually flower - beds filled with annuals or 
tender ornamental plants. They look bet- 
ter, perhaps, than utter nakedness, although 
when the choice is a particularly tasteless 
one even as much as this cannot be granted. 

In the first place, what ha.s been said of an- 
nual creepers applies equally to tender plants 
of other sorts — the work is done, the effect 
is produced, for the season merely. When 
winter comes, nakedness returns in a worse 
shape than if no flowers had been planted ; 
the house stands, not even upon grass, but on 
a line of empty earth which makes its want 
of harmony with its surroundings most pain- 
fully apparent. And then in the spring the 
labor of clothing its base must be begun 
again. In the second place flower-beds are 
too monotonous. We need more variety of 
form ; we need to diversify the clothing 
green by massing it, by carrying it up in 
certain places higher than in others, and by 
spreading it out here and there to connect or 
group with other plantations in the vicinity. 
What we want to mitigate is that rigid for- 
mality of architectural features which does 



79 



Art Out-of-Doors 



not blend with the undulating variety of 
growing things ; and a flower-bed is almost 
as artificial, as rigid in effect, as foundation- 
courses of masonry. Of course, if the whole 
garden is formally disposed, then the base- 
plantations may correspond ; but such cases 
are rare in this country, and a natural ar- 
rangement of the grounds demands a thor- 
oughly natural - looking garment for the 
lower walls. Hardy shrubs are the things 
we need to m.ake an encircling garment 
which shall be high in some places, low in 
others ; here dense and massive, there light 
and graceful ; now clinging closely to the 
walls and now^ spreading away a little, or 
running along beyond the end of the house 
to border a path or mask the foundations 
of an adjacent enclosure. Shrubs give us 
everything that is thus required, and in end- 
less variety. 

But just in the profusion of species among 
which he can choose lies danger for the 
planter. When so many beautiful shrubs 
are offered by the nurseryman, and so many 
striking novelties, he may easily forget his 
main purpose, think too much of the claims 

80 



Close to the House 



of individual plants, and thus produce a 
confused medley instead of an harmonious, 
appropriate garment for the base of his walls. 
Here, even more, if possible, than in other 
portions of the home-grounds, appropriate- 
ness should be the first touch-stone to deter- 
mine choice. If '^specimen plants" are 
wanted for their own sakes, this is the last 
place where they should be put. 

Here, if a tall shrub is planted it should 
be because a tall one is needed, not be- 
cause a particularly handsome tall one has 
been seen in a nursery or in some neigh- 
bor's grounds. The question should not 
be whether one likes hlacs especially, but 
whether lilac-bushes can be well used in the 
general scheme. With a little care a good 
spot can be found for any special favorite ; 
or, if not, somiething that will w^n itself as 
high a place in its owner's affections can be 
found to use instead. 

Of course an overuse of shrubs should be 
avoided. We do not want a house to look 
as though it grew in a thicket, or as though 
the cultivation of shrubs were its owner's 
chief concern. Mass shrubs in the angles of 
8i 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



porches, steps, or bay-windows, carry them 
along in lower groups, then break them, 
and for a little space let the foundations be 
seen resting on the grass, in order that their 
stabihty may be clearly manifest, and then, 
in another angle, place another more im- 
portant group. Take the outline of the 
house and the character of its features as 
your guide, and accent these while uniting 
the building, as a whole, with its site. 
And do not conceal beautiful adjacent feat- 
ures, but sedulously plant out" those 
which, like out-houses and drying-yards^ 
should not be seen. 

Plant closely at first and then, as the in- 
dividuals develop, thin out those which are 
no longer needed, for crowded, ill-grown 
shrubs are as ineffective as a garment for the 
walls as painful to the eye of the true lover 
of plants. Each shrub should be well de- 
veloped and have room to display its pe- 
culiar habit, and the masses, as a whole, 
should have that play of light and shade and 
that freedom of movement which are ruined 
by overcrowding. Above all, never shear off 
the tops of these shrubs to a horizontal line, 

£2 



Close to the House 



nor clip them into stiff or formal shapes, 
nor trim away their lower branches and cut 
back their heads to make them look like 
dwarfed trees. All pruning and training 
should be done with a view to bringing out 
the distinctive character of the shrubs ; none 
should be forced into alien and unnatural 
forms. Shrubs which stand in front of a 
plantation should sweep the grass wdth their 
branches. Behind these may stand others of 
a different habit ; but to place individuals 
which naturally grow their branches high 
above the soil in the foreground, or to clip 
others till they present a similar but, of 
course, less pleasing appearance, is to give 
any shrubbery a bald, ill-grown, and un- 
graceful look. Nor is there any shrubbery 
where this look is so unfortunate as in one 
the very purpose of which is to unite the 
base of a house with the ground upon wdiich 
it stands. If a shrub thus placed grows too 
large, take it out, and let its neighbors grad- 
ually fill the space or plant a smaller one in 
its stead. Severe cutting will only spoil it, 
and in spoiling it you will injure the effect 
of the whole group to which it belongs. 

83 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



Color should be especially regarded in 
choosing shrubs and creepers. One monot- 
onous tint of green is to be avoided, but 
still more, an excessive use of bright-hued 
plants. Green is Nature's color. In this cli- 
mate she spontaneously produces few bright- 
hued plants ; the great majority of those 
which the nursery-gardener offers us are 
sports and freaks of Nature which she her- 
self, perhaps, would regard as lamentable 
mistakes. Curiosities have, however, a great 
attraction for the average man, especially at 
the moment when they rank as novelties 
also ; and far too many places are disfigured 
by an accumulation of abnormally colored 
plants, with striped or blotched or speckled 
foliage, and especially w^ith fohage of those 
sickly yellow hues which in nursery-cat- 
alogues are poetically called ^'golden." A 
single plant of this sort may often produce a 
pretty effect, if grouped among others of a 
normal tint — as a slender golden honeysuckle 
climbing amid others of ordinary kinds, or a 
single red Japanese maple associated with a 
mass of dark green shrubs. But to plant too 
many of them, and to mingle reds and yel- 

84 



Close to the House 



lows, streaks and spots, in the reckless man- 
ner that we often see, is to destroy all peace- 
fulness and unity as well as all naturalness of 
effect. 

But, even when shrubs of a normal hue 
are adhered to, there is still need for selec- 
tion. The different shades of green should 
be well distributed. Each should form a 
mass of sufficient size to prevent any look of 
spottiness in the general effect, each should 
harmonize with its immediate neighbors, and 
each should be in right relationship to the 
house itself. A dark blue-green should not 
come in contact with a light and rather yel- 
lowish-green ; there should be a medium 
tint to make atransition between them. Nor 
does a pale grayish - green harmonize well 
with a yellowish tint, although, against a 
dark blue-green, it may look well. Again, 
a rather yellowish shrub, which might have 
an excellent effect against a shingled or a 
painted wooden house, may look too crude 
against a red brick vv^all, while each different 
color in stone will make a different demand 
upon the exhaustless resources of the intelli- 
gent planter. In general, if dark foliage is 

85 



Art Out-of-Doors 



used in the background and lighter fohage in 
the foreground, and if there is more variety 
of hue near the eye than farther back^ the 
shrubbery will gain in depth and richness of 
effect. 

Natural development, I say, is what we 
want in a base - line of shrubs and vines 
where the home-grounds are naturalistically 
treated ; and quiet green must be the dom- 
inant color. But there are certain brilliant 
color-effects, of a transitory sort, which the 
planter would be foolish, nay, culpable, to 
neglect. I mean the color - effects which 
will come and go as the blossoms of vines 
and shrubs open and wither. So vast is the 
variety of species bearing conspicuous flov>^- 
ers that one might easily plant a great 
shrubbery which, at a given moment, would 
hardly show a green leaf at all. But this is 
not what we want around house-foundations. 
We want shrubs which will blossom succes- 
sively, one unfolding its flowers as the flow- 
ers of its neighbors fade, and all together 
giving us at all seasons a general mass of 
green with here and there a lovely bouquet 

86 



Close to the House 



of harmonious color. Early in the year 
a few little Japanese quinces next the grass 
may flame out a prophecy of spring's ap- 
proach ; later, the small Judas - tree behind 
them may outline its crimson branches 
against the wall, soon to replace their crim- 
son with green. When the lilacs in this 
corner have faded, the viburnums in that 
corner will be growing white ; and so the 
succession may be kept up until, in August, 
there is little but a harmony of green tones 
except w^here a trumpet-creeper is magnifi- 
cent with tawny clusters. 

Later, when flowers have turned into fruit, 
we may have charming accents of color 
again, if we know what plants are most beau- 
tiful in fruiting. And even in winter we 
may have lovely color-efl'ects if, in addition 
to the evergreens which we have wisely 
mingled in our plantation, we have wisely 
chosen some shrubs which carry their leaves 
— half-wuthered but still with a charm of 
their own — partly through the snowy months, 
some which keep their bright hips and berries 
for a still longer time, and some which have 
twigs and branches of soft red or golden hues. 

87 



Art Out-of-Doors 



More color than these devices can give 
us we do not need in the garment of our 
foundation-walls. A httle more may be 
supplied, if you will, by a few tall hardy 
flowering plants, like hollyhocks and the 
more delicate of the sunflowers, set against 
the open spaces of wall, or in angles where 
the neighboring shrub - forms accord with 
them. But it is less wise to scatter exotics 
about, both because they need annual re- 
planting and because they are unlikely to 
harmonize with their shrubby associates. 
And all pattern-bedding or massing of brill- 
iant flowers should be avoided here with the 
sternest self-restraint. 

They have a terrible fashion just now in 
Europe which I hope will never become a 
fashion in America. Often where a beau- 
tiful mass of shrubs had grown for awhile 
in free development, sweeping the grass 
with its delicate leaves and sprinkled flow- 
ers, the lower branches have been cut away 
and, between the shrubs and the grass, a 
pattern-border has been laid out, or rows 
of gay annuals have been set. Nothing uglier 
could be imagined — nothing more needless, 

88 



Close to the House 



senseless, inharmonious. And it is almost as 
bad to plant borders like this in front of a 
shrubbery without cutting away its branches, 
or to set pattern-beds a little farther off but 
where they will still interfere with its sim- 
plicity, its unity, its naturalistic grace. 



V 

Roads and Paths 



The will of the workeman, in doing' and bestow- 
ing of charges, shall smally avayle, without he have 
both arte and skill in the same. For that cause, it 
is the chiefest poynte ... to understand and 
know what to begin and follow." 

— Dydymits Mouniaine. 

" If the space be divided into little slips and made 
only a collection of walks, it forfeits all its advan- 
tages, loses its character, and can have no other ex- 
cellence than such as it may derive from situation." 

— Thomas JVhately. 



V 



T is generally thought that in 
planning a country-place, whe- 
ther large or sm? 11, the one 
important thing to be consid- 
ered is the situation of the house. As- 
pect and prospect — the way the house Vvill 
look to the passer - by or the approaching 
visitor, and the way the landscape w411 look 
from its windows and piazzas — are supposed 
to be questions of such paramount impor- 
tance that the choice of a site may well be 
made and the house constructed before any- 
thing else is arranged. Important questions 
these are, indeed, yet there is another of quite 
as much importance — one which must be 
borne in mind from the outset if aspect and 
prospect themselves are to be satisfactory in 
the end. This is the arrangement of the 
various roads and paths which run through 
the property. Convenience as well as beauty 
dictates that the position of the house and its 

93 




Art Oiit-of-Doors 



dependencies shall not be determined until 
this arrangement has been mapped out. 

If the grounds are large, and their surface 
is not perfectly flat and uniform, it may 
easily happen that, on the site which seems 
best to the architect, the relative positions of 
the high road and the entrance-front would 
be such that no good approach could be de- 
signed. For an approach to be good there 
must be an easy turn-in from the high road ; 
the grade within the gate must be uniform 
and as gentle as possible ; there must be no 
sharp turns, dangerous alike to meeting 
vehicles and to bordering turf ; the house 
must be well displayed to advancing eyes ; 
and the line of gravel must not so intersect 
the ground as to interfere with a beautiful ar- 
rangement of its parts, or to be itself a dis- 
agreeable object when seen from the house. 
Too often not one of these necessities is ful- 
filled in the approach, although all might 
have been fulfilled had the house been 
properly placed. Sometimes even a change 
in position so slight that it would not have 
perceptibly altered either aspect or prospect 
in general, would have made all the differ- 

94 



Roads and Paths 



ence between a bad approach and a good 
one. 

It is folly, every one will confess, to force 
a landscape-gardener to lay out a straight 
road where a curved one would look better, 
or a curved road where a direct one would 
be more sensible and therefore more beauti- 
ful ; to compel him to run a road over a 
hillock which it might encircle, or down 
into a hollow and up again when it might 
pass to one side ; to give him no convenient 
access to the high road except at a point 
where turning-in is awkward ; to forbid him 
to take in a good point of view which 
might easily be shown from the drive, or to 
show unpleasing objects which might be con- 
cealed. And yet it would be easy to point 
to many American places where just such 
necessities have been forced upon the land- 
scape-gardener by an error in the placing of 
the house, or where, to avoid them, he is 
compelled to spend a large amount of mon- 
ey, and perhaps to injure the general effect 
of the place, in altering the configuration 
of the ground. When the position of the 
principal entrance relative to the high road 

95 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



and to the varieties of surface in the ground 
has been settled, there is nothing left for him 
but to do the best he can with his approach ; 
this often means something very different 
from the best that might have been done ; 
and upon the character of the approach may 
depend the success or failure of the place as 
a whole. 

In places of much size a curved entrance- 
drive is better than a straight one. Natur- 
ally, there may be a case when a wide 
straight avenue can, with advantage, be car- 
ried in a direct line through a great estate, 
leading to a house whose architectural maj- 
esty demands a very dignified approach. 
But such cases rarely occur in America. 
As a rule what we call a large place is not 
large according to English ideas, at least in 
so far as the ornamental grounds are con- 
cerned ; and a house which we consider 
stately, an Englishman would be apt to call 
merely comfortable. Almost without excep- 
tion, therefore, wide straight drives are in- 
admissible in this country, except in pub- 
lic parks : a curved road is better, because 
96 



Roads and Paths 



less pretentious, easier to build and to drive 
upon unless the land be perfectly flat, more 
beautiful in itself, in truer harmony with 
the character of our buildings, and less de- 
cidedly artificial. 

But as all roads and walks are palpably 
artificial, no matter how they may be de- 
signed or of what material they may be 
composed, it is not good art to make too 
evident an effort to conceal the fact. The 
real reason for the existence of the drive — 
its utility — should always be acknowledged 
to the eye as well as practically secured. 
This means that even when the approach is 
curved it should not circle about to an ex- 
cessive degree, irrationally increasing the 
distance that must be traversed before the 
house can be reached, and, when its course 
is overlooked from the house, wearing an 
unmeaning, wandering look, English wri- 
ters on landscape-gardening often deplore 
the fact that, in the effort to make a display 
of magnitude in the estate or to show vari- 
ous efi'ective points of view, an approach 
has been so laid out that it is positively irri- 
tating to the visitor ; — when he thinks he is 

97 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



near his destination he finds himself carried 
away again, and sometimes this process is 
repeated several times. In addition to the 
pretentiousness and inconvenience of such 
an arrangement it injures the place as a 
whole, for there is no more fundamental 
principle in the art of gardening than that 
the fewer the roads and walks the better, 
and the shorter their course, consistent with 
convenience and good lines, the better, too. 
A line of gravel is not a beautiful object in 
itself: — it is conspicuous on account of its 
diiterence in color from the surrounding 
verdure, and wherever it comes it cuts a 
landscape - composition in two as with a 
knife. Its virtue lies in being at once as 
useful and as inconspicuous as possible. 

A happy mean between the two extremes 
of mathematical rigidity and irrational ir- 
regularity is what we want in an approach — 
a line which is direct enough to seem sensi- 
ble and yet curved enough to give grace and 
variety. Sometimes its bends will be dic- 
tated by conspicuous irregularities in the 
surface of the ground, or by existing trees 

98 



Roads and Paths 



which it is desirable to preserve. Then 

they Avill be evidently rational, and, if well 
drawn, entirely pleasing to the eye. But 
sometimes there will be no such reasons for 
curvature, and yet curvature will be neces- 
sitated by convenience in driving and by the 
general desire to avoid too stiff a line. In 
such cases a good landscape-gardener vrill 
make the curves seem natural by some de- 
vice of his own — by altering the surface of 
the ground, or by planting. AVhen his work 
is done, and time has assisted it a little, the 
effect should be the same as though Nature 
had prescribed the line of his drive. The 
drive may have been the first consideration, 
and the objects which govern its course 
merely later adjuncts ] the curve may have 
been the necessity, the hillock, the tree, or 
the group of shrubs a device to excuse it. 
But the eye need not realize the fact ; the 
surface irregularities and the plants may be 
made to seem the cause, and the curve the 
natural consequence. To secure such a result 
is one of those artifices which are inexcusable 
if they fail of the right effect, but which are 
the highest kind of art — the art that conceals 

99 



Art Out -of -Doors 



art — if they produce this effect. It is an ar- 
tistic mistake to make too palpable an at- 
tempt to disguise the utilitarian character of 
a road as a means of transit from one given 
point to another ; but it is an artistic triumph 
to make it look as though, while affording 
such transit with reasonable directness, it had 
chanced to follow a line that is beautiful 
too. Of course, w^hile the careless observer 
will be deceived by the apparent natural- 
ness, the student of art will know that 
chance has had nothing to do with the mat- 
ter ; but his eye will accept the appearance 
of happy accident, and his mind will enjoy 
it all the more for knowing that the hand 
of an intelligent man has been at work. 

But to make the curves of a drive look 
natural it is not sufficient that they should 
have some visible reason for existing. The 
objects which supply the reason must them- 
selves look natural, or the artificiality of the 
whole arrangement will at once be plain. 
To throw up a hillock or plant a tree or a 
group of trees or shrubs in a spot where it 
will deflect the road will be futile unless it 
looks as though, for other reasons, it ought 

100 



Roads and Paths 



to be there ; and to look thus it must com- 
pose well with the features around it and play 
an acceptable part in the general prospect. 
The hillock must blend and harmonize with 
the general conformation of the ground, and 
the plants must form agreeable masses — not 
too large for their places, nor so small as to 
look as though they had been dropped down 
by accident — and must usually be supported 
by other plantations in their vicinity. On 
a lawn which is large enough to be crossed 
by a road at all, there will be space for 
other trees and shrubs besides those which 
may immediately border the road ; and all 
should be so arranged that the eye will be 
convinced that, if the individuals which 
seemingly force the road to curve had been 
removed, the effect of the remainder and of 
the prospect as a whole would have suffered. 
They should seem to have stood, before the 
road was built, in places where they were 
needed as items in an harmonious picture ; 
and the road should seem to have respected 
them for this reason. Nor is it needful that 
every deflection in the road should be ex- 
cused in just this way. For example, the 

lot 



Art Out-of-Doors 



approach may diverge to the right to avoid 
a beautiful tree ; if it must then turn again 
to the left to reach the house in a conven- 
ient and pleasing way, this fact is its own 
sufficient explanation. 

Whatever the objects chosen to justify the 
bends in a road, they should not be flower- 
beds. Anything which forces a carriage to 
turn from the direct path should be a real 
and a permanent obstacle — something over 
which wheels could not pass, and which 
could not be removed without destroying 
it. To make a flower-bed play the part of 
an obstruction to vehicles gives a deplorable 
look of triviality and wilfulness; yet there 
are few objects so often seen in the bend of 
a road which crosses a lawn. The truth is, 
probably, that the road has been curved 
without thought of supplying a reason for 
the curve, simply because it could not be 
carried straight or because of the belief that 
a curve, managed in any way, would be 
beautiful ; and then the flower-bed has been 
thought of because the elbow in the grass 
seemed to offer a good place " for it. 

But its trivial, ephemeral nature is not the 



1 02 



Roads and Paths 



only reason why a flower-bed is unsuitable in 
such a position. A lawn which is large 
enough to be crossed by a road has a some- 
what park-like character, and in a park-like 
landscape a flower-bed is utterly out of place. 
The crude bright spot it makes is disagree- 
able enough in a small expanse of lawn, but 
doubly disagreeable when there is so much 
3pace that an effect of broad unity, of almost 
rural repose and peace, might be secured. 
And where a flower-bed is out of place, so, 
too, of course, are small, isolated plants, and 
especially those which have evidently been 
brought from the green-house and must soon 
be returned to it. 

But when is a lawn large enough to be 
crossed by a driveway ? Only when it is so 
extensive that a wide space in front of the 
principal side of the house can be left undis- 
turbed by its intrusive, artificial line. That 
is to say, a drive should really never cross a 
lawn, although it may divide one lawn from 
another which can be treated as an almost 
independent picture. As a feature in a pict- 
ure a road or walk is always to be deplored ; 

103 



Art Out-of-Doors 



but as a frame which encircles a picture it 
may be made inoffensive, and sometimes, 
with its bordering plantations, actually ad- 
vantageous. Too wide and open a prospect 
is not desirable any more than one too 
cramped and crowded ; and while planta- 
tions are often needed to justify the course 
of the road, they are also needed to adorn it 
to the eyes of those who pass over it. Trees 
and shrubs may explain its curvatures, while 
it will explain the varied charms of shadow- 
ing foliage and lower masses of green. Each 
factor helps the other by giving it a reason 
for existence, and both together may be 
beautifully brought into the middle distance, 
at the side of a landscape picture, framing 
the foreground and affording glimpses, more 
attractive than a wholly unobstructed view, 
into the wider landscape beyond. 

To preserve a broad expanse of lawn in 
front of a house is in itself sufficient excuse 
for carrying the road to one side. If a 
minor curve is justified by the wish to pre- 
serve a fine tree, so a general deflection from 
the direct line of approach is justified by the 
wish to secure that broad stretch of green 
104 



Roads and Paths 



which is the most beautiful of all possible 
adjuncts to a home — which is the indispen- 
sable foreground in any out - door picture 
where utter wildness of aspect is not desired. 
A carefully clipped and tended lawn is the 
first thing to be secured where there is any 
comparatively level ground, where the house 
is anything but the simplest cottage, and 
w^here the rest of the place is to be ^^kept 
up" by the gardener's hand. If place and 
purse are so modest that the expense of turf- 
ing and clipping cannot be incurred, then a 
stretch of meadow left in its natural condition 
is essential ; and in either case it is equally 
necessary that, to produce the right effect of 
breadth and peacefulness, the grass should 
be kept as free as possible from roads and 
walks. 

To secure a good lawn where it can be 
most enjoyed — to keep the approach from 
cutting into two parts what ought to be an 
harmonious picture, opposite the chief win- 
dows — it is best, of course, not to have the 
entrance-front of the house and the lawn- 
front the same. Even though the highvray 
may lie opposite the front where the lawn 

105 



Art Out-of-Doors 



must be made, the approach ought, if pos- 
sible, to be carried to a door which stands 
in another side. There will be no look of 
caprice in such an arrangement, for where 
the front door is, there, of necessity, the 
road must go. It will not suffice to carry 
the road to one side, leaving an agreeable 
expanse of lawn, and then bring it along 
close by the house to a door in the lawn- 
front. This is a very common arrangemient 
but a very bad one. If a road crossing the 
lawn in full sight of the chief windows and 
piazzas is offensive, still more so is a road 
running between the house and the lawn, 
^H^^ming a barren streak in the immediate 
preground of the picture, and preventing 
that union of the house-foundations with 
the grass which it is so important to secure. 
Worse than anything else, however, is the 
vide sweep we constantly see, where, be- 
tween house and lawn, a road returns upon 
itself. No one would ruin a fine painted 
landscape by pasting a strip or great circle 
of gray paper over the lower part of the 
foreground : yet this is just what hundreds 
of owners do with strips and circles of gray 

io5 



Roads and Paths 



gravel in their natural landscapes. And 
how much pleasanter is it for the foot to 
step from door or window or piazza directly 
upon the grass than to be obliged to cross a 
stretch of dusty or muddy road ! 

In these last paragraphs we find another 
reason w^hy, as I said before, the house 
should not be placed or even planned until 
the roadways have been mapped out. A 
want of consideration in placing the main 
entrance may easily ruin the chance, not 
only for a good approach, but for a good 
lawn as well. Neither architect nor owner 
can always tell where it will be best to 
make the lawn any more than where it will 
be best to run the roads. The front-door is 
the end of the approach, and not to consult 
the landscape-gardener with regard to its 
position is to strike, without his consent, 
the key-note which must govern his whole 
arrangement. 

What is true with regard to the length of 
roads applies also to their width : the less 
there is of them in either direction the 
better. A drive where vehicles meet should 
be wide enough to allow them to pass with- 
107 



Art Out-of-Doors 



out danger to themselves or the borders, but 
anything in excess of this should be studi- 
ously avoided ; and if a turning-place must 
be provided near the house, the oval should 
be made as narrow as convenience will 
allow, or the road should be carried around 
a plantation of some sort. Here again, 
however, the plantation should not be a 
flower-bed. It should not look as though it 
had been put in to fill up a sweep v/hich 
had been made too large ; it should not 
look as though it existed because of the 
road. The road should look as though it 
took the encircling curve because there was 
an obstacle to its turning short upon itself 
which it was desirable to preserve. And the 
exact character of this obstacle should be 
regulated by surrounding things, and espec- 
ially by those which lie opposite the door. 
If it is well to shut out something unat- 
tractive, then a shrubbery or low-growing 
tree may fill the space ; or if it is well that 
the eye should have free passage, then a tree 
with higher branches may be chosen. 

But, of course, the arrangements which 
are ideally best cannot always be made. In 

io8 



Roads and Paths 



many cases where the road can be kept 
away from the immediate vicinity of the 
house-front, it will have to pass it at a 
greater distance. Its presence may then be 
masked by low plantations which will, at 
least, be less disagreeable to the eye than the 
line of gravel. But plantations wull often 
be undesirable as obstructions in what ought 
to be a simple extended view, or a broadly 
treated landscape. It is better, when possi- 
ble, to sink the road, or to raise the lawn in 
a gentle slope toward it to such a degree 
that the eye will not perceive it, and that 
the stretches of lawn on its hither and fur- 
ther sides will seem to unite without a break. 

If the place is so large that the house is 
not seen until after one has entered the ap- 
proach, attention should be paid to the first 
view thus afforded. There is much in in- 
itial impressions, and a house may never 
redeem itself wholly in a visitor's eyes if it 
fails to do itself justice when they first hght 
upon it. 

The samxe general principles hold with re- 
gard to walks as with regard to drives. 
109 



Art Oiit-of-Doors 



There should be no more walks than are 
needful • they should neither be so straight 
as to lack beauty, nor so meandering as to 
lack good sense ; and they should be as nar- 
row as convenience will permit, for gravel- 
streaks are not charming objects in them- 
selves, and the greater their breadth the 
more they decrease the apparent size of the 
place. A walk six feet wide, where one of 
three would have sufficed, will dv»^arf its sur- 
roundings to a much greater degree than 
most owners realize. 

A lawn can be injured almost as much by 
foot-paths as by drives when they cut across 
it. A properly kept lawn is as delightful to 
walk upon as to look at, and, in our dry 
summers, the days are rare when it will be 
too wet even for a lady's shoe. Of course, 
there may be cases when some distant object 
— a summer-house that is constantly used, a 
boat-house, or a tennis-court — will so con- 
stantly attract the feet that, unless a walk be 
provided, a ragged path will be worn across 
the grass. Then a made walk is naturally 
better, for anything is better than a look of 
untidiness and neglect in grounds which 

no 



Roads and Paths 



ought to be carefully kept. But it should, 
if possible, be carried around the lawn, and, 
if this is not possible, its presence should be 
accepted as a disagreeable necessity. 

Paths should never be made across a 
lawn simply to give access to flower-beds, 
for the flower-beds themselves have no busi- 
ness there. A lawn is a place for grass. 
Its object, whether it be large or small, is 
to afford a simple sheet of verdure to de- 
light the eye with its reposeful breadth, and 
to supply a proper foreground for the plan- 
tations beyond it. To spot bright beds 
about is to ruin its peacefulness and its 
unity. There are thousands of country- 
places in America, from large estates to 
suburban villas, which would be immeasur- 
ably improved could all the flower-beds on 
the lawn and all the fountains and vases be 
removed, and all the paths — leading no- 
where but back to the house again — be once 
and for all turfed over. Flowers can usual- 
ly be introduced in sufficient quantities in 
other ways — ^scattered among the shrubber- 
ies or arranged in massed beds behind the 
house, or in borders disassociated from the 



III 



Art Out-of-Doors 



lawn. Or, if they are the prime considera- 
tion and the place is not large enough for a 
lawn and a fioAver-garden both, it is better 
to give up the lawn altogether and arrange 
in front of the house an old-fashioned gar- 
den with as many beds and walks and box- 
hedges as the space will allow. Such a de- 
sign is consistent and sensible and may be 
made very pretty, while the more common 
device of trying to unite a lawn and a flower- 
garden is illogical^ and can never result in 
anything but an artistic monstrosity. 

Where there is a lawn, large or small, no 
vralk should run between it and the house. 
Let the grass come up to the house-founda- 
tions, and unite the two by planting a few 
vines and shrubs. Then the house and its 
site will be connected and harmonized : the 
walls will seem to spring from the soil al- 
most like a natural growth, and the picture 
seen from the lawn will be as charming as 
that which the lawn vrill present when seen 
from the house. Whether there is a mere 
door-step, or a porch, or a piazza, no path 
is needed, for this entrance should be used 
only by those who wish to stroll upon the 

112 



Roads and Paths 



lawn, or to cross it to some spot not other- 
wise accessible. And even on those sides 
of the house where a path is needed it 
should not be allowed to run close to the 
walls. Sufficient space should be reserved 
for planting against the walls, and thus, if 
the further side of the path is properly- 
planted too, from a little distance the eye 
will see only the masses of verdure which 
connect the house with the landscape about 
it. 

When we are thinking not of a country- 
place but of a more modest home — a simple 
cottage in a narrow lot or a villa in wider 
grounds — the first point to be decided is the 
position of the house as regards distance 
from the street. Cases are rare in which 
the configuration of the ground determines 
this question ; most often it depends merely 
upon the size of the expanse of level ground, 
and the taste of the owner. In former days 
such a house was usually placed quite near 
the street, its principal lawns and gardens 
lying in the rear, as we see in Salem, New 
Bedford, Annapolis, and other colonial towns. 

113 



Art Out-of-Doors 



To-day the most general custom is to set the 
house well back from the street, leaving room 
in front for a lawn with trees and shrubs, and 
in the rear for a fruit or vegetable garden, 
and often a stable. 

This arrangement, consistently followed, 
is certainly the best as regards the aspect of 
the street itself, giving it breadth and dig- 
nity and a pleasing combination of natural 
and architectural features. And it is proba- 
bly the best, too, as regards the comfort and 
pleasure of the average modern owner, for, 
while it removes his windows from immedi- 
ate contact with the street, it permits him 
still to take a contemplative part in the life 
of the town, over a foreground green and 
pleasant to the eye; and this privilege is 
more valued by the average American than 
by the average Englishman, while he has 
not the Englishman's feeling that, to enjoy 
his own private share of Nature's beauty, 
he must carefully seclude it from the eyes of 
others. Colonial builders were English by 
near descent if not by birth, and their archi- 
tectural arrangements express the fact, being 
fitted to English modes of feeling and of hv- 

114 



Roads and Paths 



ing. They lived in their houses or in their 

gardens : vrhen their descendants introduced 
the piazza it marked a compromise in liabits, 
eminently expressive of the less reticent so- 
cial spirit Avhich had developed in America, 
and of the peculiarities of the American cli- 
mate. A house set well back from the road, 
possessing a piazza where its inhabitants 
could pass their leisure hours, protected from 
the sun and screened from too inquisitive 
passing eyes, became the rule ; a house with 
its principal rooms on the front, not on the 
back as in colonial cities, and, naturally, 
with its garden lying between these rooms 
and the street. 

"We may accept this arrangement, then, as 
the typical one for an American villa, and 
pass to the question, "Where should the main 
doorway be placed? With a villa, even 
more than with a true country house, this is 
a vital question, for the smaller one's grounds, 
the more need there is that every inch of 
them shall be made available for beauty. 

From the architect's point of view it may 
seem almost incontestably best to put the 

115 



Art Out-of-Doors 



entrance in the front of the house, as, in 

small and simple buildings, he must largely 
depend upon it for the attractiveness of his 
design. Yet even at some sacrifice of archi- 
tectural effect it is usually best to place it 
elsewhere. If the space available for a lawn 
between house and street is narrow, it is all 
the greater pity to cut it up with lines of 
gravel ] and if it is wide, it is a pity to sac- 
rifice its opportunities for fine gardening ef- 
fects. Place the main doorway in the centre 
of the front and a path must, of course, give 
access to it, while, if horses are kept, the 
impulse will be to make the path a drive, 
although the broader the line of gravel, the 
more serious the injury to the unity and re- 
pose of the garden. It can hardly be disputed 
that, unless grounds are so extensive as to 
merit the name of a country-place rather than 
of villa-grounds, a driveway should never 
pass through them on the side toward the 
street. Whether the outlook is invrard from 
the street or outward from the windows, it 
will injure their beauty more than any other 
feature which is likely to be desired ; and 
when such grounds are injured, the ov>uier 
ii6 



Roads and Paths 



has not the chance to turn his eyes for con- 
solation to a more distant landscape, as he 
may if he owns a country-place where the 
foreground is similarly disfigured. 

When horses are kept and a stable stands 
in the rear of the house, the main doorway 
should usually be placed in the side of the 
house. Then all the drive required will be 
a single stretch, entering the grounds near 
their outermost angle, and passing the door 
on the way to the stable. But the arrange- 
ment we more often see to-day, even in 
very small grounds, is a driveway cutting 
through the whole extent of the lawn, pass- 
ing by the door in the front of the house, 
then encircling the house to reach the sta- 
ble, and often having an additional curve to 
allow visitors to enter and leave the grounds 
without going back to the stable-yard to 
turn. 

If there is no stable, but the need for 
a carriage-approach is nevertheless felt, of 
course a similar arrangement is again the 
best — a drive to a door in the side of the 
house with a turn in front of it or beyond it. 
But such a need is more apt to be fanciful 

117 



Art Out-of-Doors 



than real. A short v\^alk to the carriage is 
seldom a hardship, even for the feet^ except 
in winter ; and a narrow board-walk^ tem- 
porarily laid down over the gravel or asphalt, 
will cheaply do away with the greater part 
of the inconvenience that winter brings. 
Unless he keeps horses in a stable on the 
place, or unless there is an invalid in the 
family whose comfort must be the first con- 
sideration, a villa-owner who cares at all for 
beauty will sacrifice his carriage - approach 
without a pang. 

Yet, even if it is sacrificed, there are still 
good reasons why the entrance should not 
be in the front of the house, unless it stands 
very close to the street or its grounds are 
very narrow indeed. A foot- walk must lead 
to it, and I cannot say too often that even 
the smallest ribbon of gravel is a disfigure- 
ment to a lawn. The space to be traversed 
from street to door will not be perceptibly 
lengthened by placing the door in the side 
of the house. And no injury to the plan of 
the interior need result from the change ; 
for even if the door admits, not to an old- 
fashioned narrow entry, but to a hall which 

Ii8 



Roads and Paths 



is used as a living - room, a little ingenuity 
will suffice to make some of the windows 
of this hall command the front prospect. 
Again, unless the grounds are very large, so 
that there are lawns at side or back as well 
as in front, the front is the best place for 
loggias or piazzas ; and these are best fitted 
for their purpose when disconnected from 
the entrance and thus protected from the 
immediate intrusion of visitors, while, by 
carefully planting near the street-line and 
the piazza, and carefully designing the piaz- 
za itself, it will usually be possible to secure 
a due degree of privacy as regards passers in 
the street. We can all remember piazzas, 
never used in the day-time, which might be 
perpetually used had the gardener taken a 
little trouble to screen them. And we have 
all seen fluttering figures hastily leaving a 
piazza, to hide themselves indoors, when an 
undesired visitor was espied in the distance. 
Better planning would vastly increase the 
comfort as well as the beauty of our suburban 
homes ; but it is the sort of planning which 
demands the landscape-gardener's even more 
than the architect's assistance. 



119 



Art Out-of-Doors 



"When a place is very small indeed, 
straight drives and paths should be pre- 
ferred to curved ones^ not, as in the case of 
a palace, for the sake of stateliness, but for 
the sake of economy of space, harmony, and 
simphcity. In such a place, I say, every 
inch of space is precious, and a straight 
path occupies less space than a curving one. 
Then, the straight hnes formed by the street 
and the house cannot for a moment be for- 
gotten, and, therefore, it is good art to ac- 
cept them as the basis of the whole scheme 
and repeat them in the intermediate lines of 
gravel. It is difficult, too, to give grace to 
a sinuous line unless it has considerable 
length, and the straight line is simpler in 
effect than a curved one, and simplicity is 
the greatest possible virtue which very small 
grounds can have. Of course, if there are 
irregularities in the surface of the ground, 
they will determine the trend of the paths ] 
but the average villa-plot is as flat in surface 
as it is symmetrical in outline. 

I20 



VI 

Piazzas 



I line it with mats and spread the floor with 
mats; and there you shall sit . . . and I will 
make you a bouquet of myrtle every day." 

— Ccrjcper. 

"If not engaged in /Esthetic Tea, yet in trustful 
evening conversation, and, perhaps, Musical CoiTee." 

— CarlyJe. 



VI 




OTHING is more characteristic 
of American country-houses, as 
contrasted with those of other 
northern lands, than their large 



covered piazzas. These have been devel- 
oped in answer to as distinct and imperative 
a national need as ever determined the gene- 
sis of an architectural feature. Our colonial 
ancestors did without piazzas, for their hab- 
its of living and their architectural schemes 
were alike imported from England and Hol- 
land ; and amid a strenuous people, occupied 
with sterner problems than how to live most 
agreeably, it was naturally some time before 
that gradual modification of habits which is 
inevitably brought about at last by new cli- 
matic influences could express itself in archi- 
tectural language. No early colonial house 
had anything that resembled a piazza. If 
we find one attached to such a house to-day, 
it is an addition of later date — as is the case 



123 



Art Out-of-Doors 



with the well-known Longfellow house in 
Cambridge. 

But the introduction of classical fashions 
in architecture meant the erection of por- 
ticos, and the addition which they made 
to comfort has never again been dispensed 
with. When classic forms were abandoned 
in favor of what has been dubbed our 

vernacular " style of architecture — when 
little temples gave way to plain, square, box- 
like houses with gabled roofs — the portico 
vanished, but its place was taken by a modi- 
fication of the veranda v/hich had long been 
in use in all southern lands. I speak of the 
course of things in our Northern States ; at 
the South, where Spanish influence was felt, 
verandas and balconies seem to have been 
used from the earliest times. 

When we say a ' ' vernacular ' ^ style of 
architecture, we mean one which has been 
the unaffected outcome of universal needs 
and desires and, therefore, whatever its de- 
fects from an artistic point of view, must 
have a large mieasure of practical fitness to 
recommend it. Many factors of such a style 
must persevere if progress in art is to mean 

124 



Piazzas 



more beauty and more fitness too ; and, in 
fact, widely as we have departed from the 
plain, box - like house in recent years, our 
best new country houses are, in many re- 
spects, developed from them, and most 
notably so as regards the constant presence 
of the piazza. Considerations of sentiment 
and art excuse and make good its absence 
to the owner of an old colonial house ; but 
when a new house is desired it is a clearly 
recognized necessity, even though some 
colonial scheme may be closely followed in 
other respects. Only in very rare cases do 
w^e see piazzas dispensed with by owners 
who care more for the odd pleasure of 
copying with exactness an inappropriate 
foreign model than for building themselves 
really comfortable homes. 

Certainly no really comfortable country 
home can exist in our land without a piazza. 
Even on our most northerly borders the heat 
of our summer atmosphere and the strengtlT 
of our sunshine make exercise in the open 
air, to the extent to which it is practiced in 
England, for example, a sheer impossibility. 
Nor, for similar reasons, could we sit with 

3 25 



Art Out-of-Doors 

comfort on the lawns of England or the un- 
covered terraces of France, or in the arbors, 
placed at some distance from the house, 
which are so characteristic of German villas. 
We must have a wide and open yet covered 
space, closely connected with our living- 
rooms, where we can pass our hours of rest 
and many of our hours of occupation too. 
How necessary it is we read in the fact that, 
when well arranged, the piazza always be- 
comes the very focus of domestic life and 
social intercourse — as central a feature in 
summer as the parlor-fireside is in winter. 

But it is hardly needful to-day to affirm 
that an American country house without a 
piazza is in every sense a mistake and a 
failure — that it palpably lacks fitness, and 
therefore must lack true beauty in the eyes 
of intelligent observers. It is more needful 
to protest against the excessive use of piazzas 
than to urge their erection. When their 
value was first fully appreciated, it was, not 
unnaturally, overappreciated. Architect and 
owner alike believed that they could not 
get too much of them. A house of any im- 
portance most often had three if not all of its 
126 



Piazzas 



sides encircled by piazzas, and their breadth 
was apt to be as excessive as their length. 
To-day a reaction has happily begun. Pi- 
azzas on all sides of a house mean that all 
the rooms are somewhat darkened, and that 
direct sunshine can nowhere enter the low- 
est story. This consideration is important 
even when a house is meant merely for 
summer use ; and it is all - important when 
winter as well as summer comfort must be 
secured. Again, experience will always 
show that only certain favorite corners of 
very long piazzas are used, so that other por- 
tions might be removed and never missed. 
And, finally, one of the most difficult of 
current architectural problems is so to treat 
a piazza that it will seem an integral part of 
the house instead of a mere attached shed ; 
and, of course, the larger it is, the harder 
becomes the task. If we look at our best 
recent houses, we find that the main piazza 
is confined to one side, or that, placed on a 
corner, it partly encircles two sides ; and 
there can be fev/ cases in v>'hich more than 
this is needful. 

But for this to suffice, the piazza must not 
127 



Art Out-of-Doors 



be considered as a mere adjunct to an interior 
which may be planned without regard to it. 
Success in its arrangement will depend upon 
choice of exposure and outlook, but also 
upon the way in which it is connected with 
the interior. If a piazza does not command 
the best view, or has not sufficient light, 
or, on the other hand, admits the sun too 
freely, it will be a perpetual exasperation to 
its owner, while if it is not easily accessible 
from the most commonly frequented rooms 
it will not fulfil its whole purpose. And, 
again, a want of thought in placing it may 
needlessly injure the rooms, excluding Hght 
and sun where they are most to be desired. 
In short, the piazza must be considered 
from the very outset as an integral portion 
of the house, and at every step in the plan- 
ning a careful compromise must be made 
betw^een its claims and those of the interior. 
Of course, no general rules for its arrange- 
ment can be laid down. In some cases 
there may be but one possible position for 
it ; in others the advantages of a certain ex- 
posure or a particularly charming point of 
view may be of determining weight ; and 
128 



Piazzas 



in others again there will be a much wider 
latitude for choice. The only rule is to con- 
sider all claims together from the very be- 
ginning, and to know clearly which ones, by 
reason of the habits and tastes of the owners, 
ought to be most fully met if compromise 
of any conspicuous kind is necessary. 

The claims of certain other external feat- 
ures likewise tell us not to exaggerate our 
piazzas, and to make them commodious by 
building them broad rather than long. In 
a house of the old piazza - encircled type, 
it was difficult, for instance, to emphasize 
the chief entrance which, if a house is to 
have the right home-like air, should always 
be hospitably prominent ; upper balconies, 
which are often so useful as well as pretty, 
could not be well placed above the long 
piazza roofs ; terraces were hard to treat, 
and that delightful feature, the Italian log- 
gia, was impossible, at least on the ground- 
floor. 

Of late we have begun to employ these 
other external features with the happiest re- 
sults in the way of comfort no less than in 
129 



Art Out-cf-Doors 



the way of beauty. The front door is ac- 
centuated by an independent porch, often 
usefully extended over the driveway. Up- 
per balconies are attached to the chief bed- 
rooms, or thrown out from any window 
which chances to command a particularly 
attractive view. Uncovered terraces of 
turf or stone are formed where needful, and 
a portion of the piazza itself is often left 
uncovered, supplying a pleasant place of re- 
sort when dull weather or autumn cold ren- 
ders a roof unnecessary, and a delightful one 
at night in warmer weather. And loggias 
are seen in both the lower and the upper 
stories. 

No architectural innovation is more to be 
commended than the use of the loggia, 
which may be described as a recessed piazza 
— a piazza set back into the body of the 
house, flanked at either end by the walls, 
and covered by the projection of the upper 
story. In Italy it does not usually appear 
on the ground-floor, for there this floor is 
not devoted to the chief apartments ; but its 
effect is just as good when it is adapted to 
our own customs of building and living. In 

130 



Piazzas 



certain very exposed situations the piazza 
may well be entirely banished in favor of a 
loggia ; in others a small open piazza may 
be effectively supplemented by a larger log- 
gia ; and in almost every country-house at 
least a Httle loggia should be introduced 
either up-stairs or down. Our climate is so 
very variable that too careful a provision 
can hardly be made for changing winds and 
skies and temperatures. 

Another useful device is a terrace pro- 
tected by a trellis over which are trained 
vines that will soon form a thick summer 
covering, while in winter their naked boughs 
will admit light and sun to the rooms be- 
hind. Or an awning may be used if its ef- 
fect is preferred, or if there is danger that 
the vines will harbor too many mosquitoes. 
An awning has, indeed, a certain advantage 
over vines in that it may be rolled back in 
dark weather, and supported on movable 
posts which can be taken down in winter. 
Of course, neither of these expedients really 
fills the place of a true piazza, for they ex- 
clude the sun but not the glare and the 
rain, and if they are of great extent they de- 

131 



Art Out-of -Doors 



tract from solidity of effect in the house. 
But a small vine-covered terrace is never 
inadmissible, and a small awning is rarely 
offensive ; and they may at least be recom- 
mended as supplements to a true piazza, or 
even as substitutes for it in houses occupied 
throughout the year, and in positions where 
a permanent piazza-roof would be a serious 
inconvenience. 

I have said that the pleasing treatment of 
piazzas is one of the most difficult of current 
architectural problems. It is true that 
charming houses with long verandas have 
been built for generations in certain southern 
countries. But although we may get valu- 
able hints from them, they cannot be used 
as models. Ours is not a truly southern 
climate, but one in which almost tropical 
heat alternates with almost Siberian cold. 
Our more comphcated habits of life demand 
more complicated ground-plans than those 
which serve, for instance, in an Indian 
bungalow, and every deviation from a simply 
outlined and low-roofed form makes the 
right architectural use of piazzas more dififi- 
132 



Piazzas 



cult. Yet until quite recent years the diffi- 
culty of the problem was hardly recognized. 
No attempt was made so to unite the piazza 
with the house, in both form and material, 
that it should seem an integral part of it 
and not a mere attached shed. Whatever 
the material of the house, the piazza was 
built of wood, and it was simply tacked on 
to the walls without the slightest thought of 
union. Its roofs had no relation to the roofs 
of the house, and its forms were very slight 
and fragile — the jig-saw running riot in a 
vain effort to adorn it, but no serious effort 
being made to build it beautifully. 

To-day we see a very great change for the 
better. The piazza is treated — with more or 
less success, of course — as part and parcel of 
the house. It is borne by a sohd base in- 
stead of by isolated posts which allow the 
cellar w^alls to be seen, or by a chicken-coop 
lattice. This base is often continued around 
the piazza as a parapet, some three feet in 
height, which has both artistic and practical 
merit, for it increases solidity and therefore 
dignity of effect, and it screens the feet of 
the occupants from the wind, and protects 



133 



Art Out-of- Doors 



them somewhat from the gaze of passers, 
while interfering not at all with coolness or 
with freedom of outlook. If the house is of 
brick or stone the same material is used to 
build the posts of the piazza, or if wood is 
employed, simpler and more artistic forms 
than those of former days are chosen. And 
it is covered by an outward sweep of the 
main roof of the house, or by an independent 
roof which plays an harmonious part in the 
general outline of the building. 

On houses of the revived colonial type 
the piazza naturally has a flat, balustraded 
roof which may be utilized as an uncovered 
balcony for the upper floor, or some parts 
of vv^hich may be roofed-in as upper pi- 
azzas. Difficulties are hardly as great, 
perhaps, when a flat roof can be employed 
as when a steep one is required by the 
fashion of the greater roof above. Yet, 
whatever the scheme, we here and there find 
instances, in ever-increasing number, where 
it has been thoroughly well managed. Of 
course, an ideal degree of success is seldom 
seen as yet, and many of our new houses 
are quite as ugly, in their own way, as the 

134 



Piazzas 



shed -encircled boxes which preceded them. 
And they are, perhaps, even more distressing 
to the mind ; for the old house had at least 
the merit of frank simplicity, while the new 
one has often the great demerit of seeming a 
labored effort after as much eccentricity as 
possible. Yet, taking good and bad to- 
gether, the general improvement which has 
marked our architecture in recent years can 
nowhere be more clearly read than in our 
country-homes. And it is a most significant 
proof of the genuine, \utal, and promising 
character of our progress that these homes 
should have been so greatly improved, not 
through imitation of foreign models, but 
through the development of indigenous 
fashions, and the incorporation — despite 
difficulties which might perhaps have been 
thought insuperable — of the ^ ' vernacular ' ' 
piazza. 

135 



VII 

Formal FIower-Beds 



" Let every man, if he likes of these, take what 
may please his minde, . . . observing this deco- 
rum, that according to his ground he do cast out his 
knots." 

— John Tarkinson. 

" Minute beauties are proper in a spot precluded 
from great effects." 

— Thomas Whately. 



VII 




ORMAL, ^^architectural" styles 
of gardening prevailed all 
through the western world un- 
til about the middle of the last 



century. It was only in China and Japan, 
countries then ignored by the European ar- 
tist, that naturalistic methods of gardening 
had been developed. But when Pope and 
Addison had preached the gospel of infor- 
mality in the surroundings of a home, and 
when the gardeners of their time had put 
their ideas into concrete shape, formal gar- 
dening fell into total disesteem in Northern 
Europe. The so-called natural style," for 
which the distinctive term landscape-gar- 
dening was invented, soon ruled in England 
so absolutely that hundreds of fine old gar- 
dens were destroyed to make room for its 
innovations, and many magnificent parks 
were remodelled, even their avenues of 
stately ancient trees being pitilessly felled. 



139 



Art Out-of-Doors 



On the continent there was a less reckless 
wish to obliterate the creations of the past, 
but here too landscape - gardening became 
the fashion ; new places were designed in 
naturahstic ways, and ^^Enghsh gardens'^ 
wxre added to the old formal parks around 
royal palace and private chateau. 

Up to the present day landscape-garden- 
ing has remained the form of art almost ex- 
clusively practised in England, Germany, 
and France, as well as in this country. 
But in comparatively recent years there has 
been a marked revival of a love for certain 
formal gardening features. We hardly think 
of laying-out even small gardens in the ways 
familiar to our far-off ancestors ; but we de- 
light to use, in our formal arrangements, the 
stiff pattern-beds or knots " which played 
a conspicuous part in their architectonic de- 
signs. 

The revival of these beds and borders 
is sometimes attributed to that fancy for 
bright-flowered geraniums and pelargoniums 
which, a generation ago, was so strong that, 
in England at least, it amounted to a verit- 
able craze ; and to the general introduction, 
140 



Formal Flower-Beds 



a little later, of the coleus and other bright- 
leaved exotic plants. But I think that this 
view must be mistaken. I think it miust be 
truer to turn the statement about and say- 
that geraniums and coleus - plants became 
popular because public taste had begun to 
demand bright-colored and stiff material for 
a special gardening purpose. 

This purpose was part of a generally in- 
creasing desire to ornament home-grounds 
as effectively as possible with the smallest 
possible expenditure of thought and pains. 
An immediate result and a showy result — 
this was the end desired in our gardens ; 
and no way of securing it seemed so seduc- 
tive as to mass such plants as coleus and 
geraniums in large bodies so that their viv- 
idness of leaf and flower should be brought 
into strong relief by an expanse of closely 
cut turf. 

The desire thus expressed was not, in it- 
self, very laudable ; and the device it seized 
upon is less satisfactory, even from a purely 
practical point of view, than it appears to 
superficial thought. It would be easy to 
show that the practice of ^^bedding-out" 

141 



Art Out-of-Doors 



is, in the long run, the costhest and most 
troublesome which can be adopted for the 
adornment of a garden, either large or 
small. But I want to speak simply of the 
artistic value of the formal pattern-bed. Is 
it a beautiful thing, or is it an ugly thing ? 

Like almost everything else in the world, 
a formal flower-bed is beautiful or ugly ac- 
cording to whether it is itself well designed 
or badly designed, but especially whether it 
is in the right place or the wrong place. 
Even great intrinsic beauty will not save 
it from condemnation unless it satisfies the 
broad artistic test of fitness. 

Pattern-beds are conspicuously formal — 
that is, symmetrical and rigid — -in outline, 
and very often in surface, and conspicuously 
brilliant in color. Therefore, they are in- 
trinsically good when their outlines are 
agreeable to the eye, and when their colors 
are harmoniously arranged ; and they are 
appropriate where rigid, symmetrical lines 
of other sorts accompany them, and where a 
large spot of vivid color does not strike too 
loud a note in the general eft^ect of the 
142 



Formal Flower-Beds 



grounds. Under these conditions formal 
flower-beds are in place ; under other con- 
ditions they are out of place. 

Unfortunately, this is to say that, as we 
most often see them used, they are decided- 
ly out of place — decidedly injurious to the 
scene which they are supposed to ornament, 
and, therefore, ugly things of which no sen- 
sitive eye can approve. We constantly see 
them in grounds which have been laid out 
according to a naturalistic, unsymmetrical 
scheme. No position could be w^orse for 
a formally outlined bed than one where all 
the surrounding Hues, ahke of gravel-walk, 
of free - growing shrub, and of untrimmed 
tree, are varied and naturalistic in effect. 
And no position could be worse for a mass 
of brilliant color than in the centre of a 
stretch of bright green, shaven turf. It 
ruins that air of unity, repose, and breadth 
which is the real aim when a lawn is cre- 
ated, while the wude carpet of green throws 
its own colors into such undue relief that it 
becomes as inartistic as a chromo hung on a 
strongly tinted wall. 

It is not only in small villa-grounds that 

143 



Art Out-of-Doors 



we see formal flower-beds used in this inar- 
tistic fashion. There are few large country 
places in America, or in Europe either, 
where the lawns are not marred by shriek- 
ing spots of color, set down here and there 
with as little thought of the general impres- 
sion that the scene will make upon the eye 
as though a blind man had played gardener. 
Good cultivators love such beds because 
they show how skilfully they can grow and 
trim their plants ; and owners love them 
because — well, I fear simply because they 
are showier than anything else. And they 
disfigure our public parks and cemeteries as 
sadly as our private grounds. 

Central Park has been almost altogether 
preserved from their intrusion, and so has 
Prospect Park in Brooklyn. But in Chicago 
parks there are shocking displays of bad 
taste in this direction ; here ordinary pat- 
tern-beds have not contented gardeners am- 
bitious to show how cleverly they can use 
plants grown in forms of wicker or wire to 
simulate, in the round," great arm-chairs 
and row - boats, garden - gates and rolls of 
carpet, and even human beings. Doubtless 



144 



Formal Flower- Beds 



these hideous eccentricities could be matched 
in other places in the West ; and in the East 
we find at least the ordinary pattern - bed 
misused in lamentable fashions. 

I do not know that the Public Garden in 
Boston offers the worst instance of this mis- 
use, but it is the one with which I am most 
famihar. It is a delightfully situated piece 
of ground, with a gently modulated surface 
and a pretty sheet of water, and it is well 
laid out in a naturalistic way. Some of its 
architectural details are poor, but these 
would not disturb us much if, year by 
year, the gardener could be pursuaded to re- 
strict his efforts in the way of bedding-out. 
One-tenth as many bright-hued beds would 
produce ten times as good an effect. In the 
centre of the garden there is a straight path 
w^hich crosses a stone bridge. Along this 
path and in one or two other places stiff 
and brilliant beds are appropriate. But 
everywhere closely set along the edges of the 
winding paths and near the base of freely 
grouped trees, and isolated in the centre of 
stretches of lawn, they ruin the charm of 
what might be peacefully verdant, genuinely 



145 



Art Out-of-Doors 



naturalistic landscape-pictures. If they were 
better in color than they are — if the diverse 
tints which compose them were more taste- 
fully selected and contrasted — they would 
still be ugly, for they would still be out of 
place. 

We are always told that the public ad- 
mires them.; but popular taste is not a cri- 
terion which those who serve our public 
can yet respect. Our public has seen too 
few good examples to know, theoretically, 
what it likes in the way of gardening art. 
Naturally it likes flowers and bright - hued 
plants of all kinds. When it sees them as 
they are shown in the Public Garden, it de- 
lights in them for their own sakes while it 
rarely thinks of the general effect of the place. 
But if it could once see this place as it ought 
to look, softly green and quiet, enlivened 
but not confused by a few touches of bril- 
liant color, I am sure it would recognize 
the improvement, and not mourn the scores 
of vanished beds. Even to - day, I think, 
the people of Boston take more pleasure in 
the masses of freely flowering plants which 
adorn the new park -ways on the western 
146 



Formal Flower-Beds 



borders of the city than in the much costHer 
and showier ornamentation of their Pubhc 
Garden. 

Surely we ought not to go astray so often 
in so simple a matter as this. Surely it is 
easy to see that formal flower-beds must be 
demanded — or at least supported and ex- 
plained — by some measure of formality in 
neighboring things. An architectural ter- 
race may be planted with them, although a 
naturalistic lawn may not ; while they can- 
not look well in the centre of a freely 
treated park-landscape, they may in some 
spot, defined by meeting paths, near the 
line where the flowing features of the park- 
design meet the symmetrical features of the 
street ; and in very small open spaces in a 
city, where trees and shrubs could hardly 
flourish, we might use them much more often 
than we do. In short, they are artistic 
whenever they look as though they belonged 
in the place where they lie ; and this leads 
us to the fact that they are especially artis- 
tic vrhen they look as though this place be- 
longed to them — as though it had been pre- 

147 



Art Out-of-Doors 



pared for them and could not rightly be 

filled with anything else. 

I can cite no better example of this effect 
than the walled garden which lies in front 
of Charlecote Hall, near Stratford-on-Avon. 
The Hall is still owned, as it was in Shakes- 
peare's day, by the Lucy family ; and as 
it was built in 1558, six years before Shakes- 
peare's birth, within its walls must have 
passed his famous interview with Sir Thomas 
Lucy — if, indeed, the deer-poaching story 
be counted a true one. 

It is a fine big Elizabethan house, and its 
courtyard^ must be one of the few still pre- 
served in England from days when architec- 
tural gardens were in highest favor. One 
side of this forecourt — to use the contem- 
porary term — is made, of course, by the 
facade of the hall itself. In the centre of 
its opposite side, facing the portal of the 
hall, rises a stately gate-house with a large 
round-arched entrance ; and the rest of the 
enclosure is encircled by walls which are 

* I am writing of this courtyard from a photo- 
graph taken some years ago. Just how it may look 
to-day I do not know. 

148 



Formal Flower-Beds 



solid to a height of some five or six feet, and 
then are finished by an elaborate open-work 
parapet. How is this formal space ar- 
ranged ? A straight drive leads from the 
gateway to the Hall, in front of which it 
spreads into a broad carriage-sweep ; and 
all the remaining space is a formal flower- 
garden with small pattern-beds of graceful 
shapes, divided by narrow threads of grav- 
el and forming two large designs, one on 
either side of the road, which are set off 
from the road and the carriage - sweep by 
borders of turf. 

If we imagine this rectangular, walled-in 
space disposed in a naturalistic way, we 
perceive at once that it would be ineffective 
in itself and that it would injure the unity 
of its architectural environment. Now, be- 
yond the garden-walls, freely growing tall 
trees crowd up closely and proclaim the 
naturalistic beauties of the encircling park ; 
and their contrast wuth the architectural 
charm of the garden makes them seem 
doubly beautiful, doubly suggestive, while 
it enhances the charm of the garden itself. 
Even if the beds in this garden are very 



149 



Art Out-of-Doors 



brightly colored they can hardly look crude 
or gaudy, for they are not set as spots on a 
carpet of vivid green. The neutral tones 
of the gravel and of the encircling walls 
must subdue the boldest floral notes, if they 
are rightly grouped, into a general harmony. 

But the closely clipped pattern - bed is 
not the artist's only resource when a cer- 
tain measure of formality is required by the 
general character of a spot. There are 
other flower-beds which are formal yet not 
so conspicuously formal, and which are 
bright yet not so gaudily bright. 

Some of the smaller pleasure-grounds in 
Paris are symmetrically planned as a succes- 
sion of rectangular grass-plots divided by 
gravelled paths. No scattered beds or iso- 
lated plants break the repose of these formal 
little lawns, but they are encircled, near their 
edges, by long narrow beds planted with a 
great variety of hardy shrubs and flowers. 
The small spaces which surround the sides 
of the Louvre, at the end toward the church 
of Saint-Germain-l'iVuxerrois, are thus dis- 
posed ; so are many parts of the Luxembourg 
gardens, and of those attached to suburban 

150 



Formal Flower-Beds 



palaces ; and so, on a larger scale, are the 
beautiful new gardens which lie where the 
Tuileries palace stood — betw^een the great 
Tuileries gardens with their ranges of an- 
cient trees, and the paved courtyard of the 
Louvre. 

The flower-beds in these spots, I say, are 
formal in outline ; but they are merely long 
simple strips, not true pattern-beds, nor do 
the plants which fill them grow in patterns. 
They are disposed with a certain symmetry, 
but neither disposed nor grown with mathe- 
matical precision. Shrubby perennials — 
standard roses, dwarf standard alth^as, and 
Persian or Chinese lilacs being the favorites 
— are set at regular intervals along the cen- 
tre of a bed, its ends or corners being com- 
monly marked by rather taller specimens. 
Between these, conspicuous plants of lesser 
height are set, and then the bed is filled to 
its edges with a varied mass of still lovrer 
plants. In August and September I noted, 
among those of medium size, dahlias of 
different heights, gladioli, cannas, asters, 
and bush-daisies ; and, among the low ones, 
geraniums, heliotropes, tuberous begonias, 



Art Out-of-Doors 



lobelias, candy-tufts, and lantanas, with cen- 
taurea, coreopsis, and gaura lindheimeri. 
These last, which formed the real filling of 
the bed, were not heterogeneously mingled 
as isolated specimens, and yet they were not 
stiffly massed. A little clmnp of each had 
been carefully placed with due regard to the 
habit and color of its neighbors, and then 
the whole bed had been allowed to grow in 
free luxuriance. Particularly pretty effects 
were produced by the mingling of geraniums 
with red and with white flowers, by the con- 
trast of the red ones with small clusters of 
white centaurea, and again by the way in 
which heliotropes and yellow-flowered lan- 
tanas had interlocked and intertwined their 
sprays. The bright blue blossoms of the 
lobelias had been set where they did not 
offend the eye by contact with inharmoni- 
ous hues ; and excellent use had been made 
of all the white flowers to separate and relieve 
the brilliant colors. In certain other French 
towns the grass-plots in gardens of this sort 
sometimes have a central bed of flowers or 
foliage - plants, while shrubs are set near 
their corners ; but I noticed no such in- 



152 



Formal Flov/er-Beds 



stances in Paris, and the effect is best when 
the grass furnishes a perfectly quiet back- 
ground for its gay but not crude or gaudy 
garland. 

Of course the early spring and summer 
aspect of such borders is different from the 
aspect I have described ; but it must be 
equally charming, for then flowering bulbs 
fill the spaces where the summer flowers are 
to follow them, and most of the standard 
shrubs are in blossom. From the artistic 
point of view these beds are a great deal 
better, in very many situations, than the 
best flat and clipped pattern-bed could be ; 
they are less mechanical in both form and 
color while distinctly symmetrical in ef- 
fect, and they show more variety in detail 
while general harmony is well preserved. 
The true lover of plants should prefer them, 
for they allow their furnishings to grow in 
free development ; they permit the use of an 
almost endless list of beautiful flowers ; and, 
discreetly visited by the scissors, they may 
yield harvests for the adornment of the 
house. From the practical point of view 
their superiority is as manifest. The stand- 



153 



Art Out-of-Doors 



ards. of course, are permanent; there is 
much less cost for wintering the other plants 
or sowing or buying them afresh each spring ; 
and much less labor is needed throughout the 
summer. Indeed, after the planting or sow- 
ing for summer has been done, no care is re- 
quired but a lirrle weeding and watering, 
and the occasional clipping of a plant which 
has run out too far over the grass, or threat- 
ens to smother too many of its neighbors. 

Such borders are called French parterres, 
but it will be a pity if their use is long lim- 
ited to France. Yet must I be careful to 
say that they too would be unsuitable in 
naturalistic landscape - designs. Can you 
fancy them appropriate and lovely if curved 
around the edges of winding walks, amid 
irregularly planted shrubs and trees ? 

154 



VIII 

Formal Gardening 



"From the intimate union of art and nature, of 
architecture and landscape, will be born the best gar- 
dening compositions which Time, purifying public 
taste, now promises to bring us." 

— Edoiiard Andre. 

" A garden is a place arranged for promenades and 
at the same time for the recreation of the eyes. But 
it is also an accessory to the house, serving it as an 
accompaniment, an environment; and, within cer- 
tain limits, it is simply another apartment, an annex 
of the house. Therefore, how can the art which 
built and adorned the dwelling be refused the right 
to interfere in this exterior house 

—J/ttet. 



VIII 



ROM the beginning of these 
chapters I have assumed that 
naturahstic methods of garden- 
ing are the most interesting 
and important to Americans ; and this is 
the truth. But I have imphed that even 
these methods must deal to some extent 
with formal elements, and also that a con- 
sistently formal scheme of design is some- 
times better for our use than any other ; 
and these are likewise truths. Indeed, they 
are truths which we should be at special 
pains to understand. Our Teutonic blood 
predisposes us to a more spontaneous and 
general love for Nature than for art, and 
thus to a preference for naturalistic rather 
than architectonic ideals in gardening : we 
are not likely ever to become so enamoured 
of formal gardening that we shall turn to it 
where landscape-gardening would serve us 
better. The danger lies in the opposite di- 

157 




Art Out-of-Doors 



rection. And, moreover, a true apprecia- 
tion of the charms of formahty would profit 
our landscape - work itself. Giving us a 
clearer insight into the true character of 
each artistic ideal, it would help us to use 
formal elements well when they are needed 
in naturalistic work, and to dispense with 
them altogether when they are needless and 
therefore inharmonious, inartistic. 

Not nearly so many books have been 
written about gardening as about the sister- 
arts, yet there is a considerable amount of 
gardening literature in the English language. 
Of course even a very true love for inani- 
mate beauty does not imply a spirit necessa- 
rily gentle, sane, and sweet in all its mani- 
festations. Yet we cannot believe that men 
are actually made narrow^ and unjust by de- 
votion to the most peaceful of the arts — the 
one which brings them into closest contact 
with Nature's all-embracing patience, kind- 
ness, and serenity, and takes them farthest 
from the heated arenas vvhere human pas- 
sions meet and struggle together. And, 
therefore, it seems strange that more nar- 

158 



Formal Gardening 



rowness and injustice should be revealed in 
the books which treat of gardening than in 
those which deal with any of the other arts. 
In elder days very few writers who advo- 
cated either the formal or the naturalistic 
style could see any merit in the opposite style, 
and in recent days the case is the same. 
Several recent books which otherwise would 
be very useful to the public are rendered pos- 
itively dangerous by the bitter way in which 
the words and works, the ideals and pro- 
cesses, of the opposite camp are attacked. 

It is worth while, I think, to point this 
out, for the judgment and taste of a novice 
may easily be warped forever by the first 
book on gardening he may chance to take 
up. It is worth while to say that he must 
read a good many such books, and check off 
their contradictory statements one against 
the other, meanw^hile using his own eyes 
out-of-doors, to arrive at a true understand- 
ing of what they teach. This is that each 
system of design is right in its own place, 
and that the advocates of each have told a 
great many cruel untruths about the advo- 
cates of the other, or at all events about 



159 



Art Out-of-Doors 



the system which did not happen to be their 
own. But occasionally we do find a wise 
and temperate writer Avho puts the fact of 
the essential excellence of both styles of gar- 
dening into brief, plain words, ^vlr. Walter 
Howe, for instance, in the charming intro- 
duction to his little book called The Gar- 
den in Polite Literature." tells us that 
there are elements of truth in the ideas of 
both schools which intelligent amateurs and 
professional men should cherish and utilize 
whenever and wherever circumstances will 
permit." And Edouard Andre, who is chief 
among the landscape-architects of France 
to-day. goes still further, in his •'•Art des 
jardins/' and says. ••'Three styles may be 
recognized : the geometrical style, the land- 
scape style, and the composite style. . . . 
The mixed or composite style results from a 
judicious mingling of the other two. under 
favorable conditions ; and, to my mind, it 
is to this style that the future of gardening 
art belongs." 

In truth, if we use our own minds and 
eyes, we find no reason to think that formal 
160 



Formal Gardening- 



gardening and naturalistic gardening are 
deadly rivals, each of Avhich must put the 
knife to the other's throat if it wishes itself 
to survive. There is no real opposition be- 
tween the two systems, widely apart though 
their extreme results may lie. 

Natural gardening" is a term we often 
hear ; but I have tried to avoid it because 
it is so inexact that it may well move to 
contumely any lover of the formal styles. 
No gardening result is natural. At the 
most it is only naturahstic. True, be- 
hind all the contents of the place sits prim.al 
Nature, but Nature - to advantage dressed,' 
Nature in a rich disguise. Nature delicately 
humored, stamped with new qualities, fur- 
nished with a new momentum, led to new 
conclusions, by man's skill in selection and 
artistic concentration. . . . ]\Ian has 
taken the several things and transformed 
them ; and in the process they passed, as it 
were, through the crucible of his mind to 
reappear in daintier guise ; in the process, 
the face of Nature became, so to speak, hu- 
manized ; man's artistry conveyed an added 
charm. ... A garden is man's tran- 

i6i 



Art Out-of-Doors 



script of the woodland world ; it is common 
vegetation ennobled — outdoor scenery neat- 
ly writ in man's small hand. It is a sort of 
twin-picture, conceived of man in the studio 
of his brain, painted upon Nature's canvas 
with the aid of her materials. ... It 
is Nature's rustic language made fluent and 
intelligible ; Nature's garrulous prose tersely 
recast ^ — changed into imaginative shapes, 
touched to finer issues." 

These are John Sedding's words, written 
by an architect, and printed in a book 
which has for its main purpose to exalt 
formal gardening and to decry the so- 
called landscape-gardener " as a person who 
is not an artist at all, but a mere helpless, 
aimless meddler with Nature, professing to 
do work exactly like Nature's, and, of course, 
always failing in the attempt. But this book 
is one of those which most grievously mis- 
represent the true ideals, methods, and results 
of landscape-gardening, however faithful may 
be its pictures of what the actual professors 
of the art to-day achieve in England ; and I 
have delighted to emphasize the fact by 
quoting this one passage as an admirable 
162 



Formal Gardening 



description of genuine landscape - arrange- 
ments — as essentially inappropriate to any 
formal arrangement. 

In a true formal garden the canvas is not 
Nature's and does not profess to be, while 
in the naturalistic garden it may be Nature's, 
and, if not, must look as though it might 
have been. In a formal garden the language 
is not a refinement of Nature's, but a trans- 
lation of it into quite another tongue. In 
a formal garden Nature is not delicately 
humored, but boldly compelled in a direc- 
tion opposite to any of those which she ever 
chooses. A formal garden is not man's 
transcript of the woodland world, but a 
wholly new conception based on architect- 
ural knowledge and elaborated by architect- 
ural taste. It is as artificial, almost, as a 
building; for, although its materials are 
Nature's, so are the stones of a cathedral ; 
and Nature shows us nothing at all resem- 
bling it, either in fundamental idea or in 
finished effect. 

On the other hand, Mr. Sedding has ex- 
actly and beautifully painted such scenes as 
we may see in Central Park. They are not 

163 



Art Out-of-Doors 



natural scenes, but they are naturalistic, in 
idea as well as in effect. Suggestions and 
hints for them may be found in wild Nat- 
ure, although no patterns. They speak to 
the mind in Nature's language, although 
more clearly and exquisitely than she ever 
speaks herself. No study of architecture 
could have taught a man how to conceive 
them, and no degree of architectural taste 
could have enabled him to perfect them. 
Nature was this artist's school-master, and 
not merely the store-keeper from whom he 
bought raw materials to be treated after 
methods of his own inventing. If no scenes 
like this existed in ^Ir. Sedding's England, 
nothing to show him a true original for his 
charming verbal picture, the fault did not 
lie, as he thought, at the door of landscape- 
gardening ; it should be laid to the fact that 
no real artist had practised landscape-gar- 
dening in the regions he explored. 

But the kind of art which he did love 
is also worthy of our love, and it is time 
that we loved and understood it better. 
It is not, as we are apt to think, a kind 
which cramps an artist within narrow bor- 

164 



Formal Gardening 



ders, which limits him to creations that are 
all alike, either in idea or in effect. The 
hill-side garden of Italy, with its terraces and 
balustrades, stairways, grottos, and statues, 
and its rich masses of freely growing foli- 
age, contrasting harmoniously with these ar- 
tificial features, is formal, architectonic, in 
aim and aspect. Formal is the vast level 
park at Versailles, with its magnificent 
straight alleys of trees, its big rectangular 
basins of water, its stately fountains and 
wide gravelled spaces — splendid outdoor 
drawing-room that it was for a pompous 
king and his courtiers. But formal, too, is 
the park at Dijon which also Le Notre de- 
signed, where a straight avenue runs through 
the centre, and narrower ones radiate from 
it to the drive which encircles the boundary, 
but where the whole of the remaining space 
is a free-growing forest, traversed by wind- 
ing footways of turf. The old Dutch gar- 
den was formal, with its trees and shrubs 
clipped into fantastic shapes, and its puerile, 
toy-like ornamentation ; but so also was the 
great walled garden of old English days, 
symmetrically arranged and partly planted 

165 



Art Out-of -Doors 



in stiff fashionS;, but partly given up to more 
naturalistic heaths " — the garden that Ba- 
con described and that Evelyn loved. An 
enclosed courtyard laid out with gravel and 
beds of flowers, like the one at Charlecote 
Hall; is formal, of course ; but so too are 
the small Parisian ^ pleasure - grounds set 
with French parterres, and so too was your 
grandmother's garden in New England, with 
its irregular masses of flowers, but its straight 
walks and prim little edgings of box. Some 
of these types are more formal, more archi- 
tectural, than others, but in none of them 
has Nature been dehcately humored; in all 
of them a non-naturalistic ideal has been ex- 
pressed by non-naturalistic methods of ar- 
rangement. 

We can thus draw a line between the one 
great gardening style and the other. But 
we should feel that it is not a rigid line. 
The borders of the two styles overlap, if 
not as regards fundamental conceptions, yet 
as regards details of execution. Nature 
must be allowed her freedom to some ex- 
tent, even where all the trees are clipped. 
166 



Formal Gardening 



all the grass is shorn, and all the flowers 
are set in pattern-beds. Within the pre- 
scribed shapes and lines she must grow her 
flowers and foliage as she will ; and she 
must supply light and shadow and the at- 
mospheric envelope. And, on the other 
hand, artificial, formal elements must enter 
into every landscape which man's foot is to 
tread and man's eye is to enjoy as a work of 
art. We must always have roads and paths 
and the non-natural curbs or edges of grass 
which they imply. In private grounds we 
have a house as the very centre and focus 
of the scene, as the very reason for its artis- 
tic treatment ; and in public parks we have 
minor buildings, bridges, steps, and many 
other artificial preparations for human com- 
fort. No garden can be absolutely artificial, 
and none can be absolutely natural ; and 
this is enough to show that the elements 
theoretically proper to the one style may 
sometimes be very freely introduced in a 
general scheme which we class as belonging 
to the other style. 

There is, for instance, a beautiful park 
near the city of Dresden. It is about a 

167 



Art Out-of-Doors 



mile in length, and in its centre stands a 
charming seventeenth-century palace, with 
one of its fronts looking out on a rectangu- 
lar sheet of water, and the other on a flower- 
beset lawn of similar extent and size, while 
from pond and lawn to the entrances of the 
park stretch wide straight roads, bordered 
by paths on either side and planted with 
regular rows of tall linden-trees and horse- 
chestnuts. Similar roads and paths like- 
wise cut through the centre of the park in 
the opposite direction, and thus we have 
a scheme which is fundamentally formal. 
But the other portions of the ground are 
treated in more naturalistic ways. Great 
forest-like masses of trees and shrubs often 
come up so close behind the avenue trees 
that from the avenue we can hardly imag- 
ine what lies beyond them. Winding paths 
traverse these naturalistic plantations, and 
now and then we find large open glades 
where splendid oaks and elms stand in half- 
rural solitude. As originally designed, more 
than two hundred years ago, this park was 
smaller and entirely formal ; but it has been 
improved, not defaced, by the additions and 

i68 



Formal Gardening 



alterations of later years. The transition 
from formality to inform.ality has every- 
where been so skilfully managed that there 
is no want of harmony in the scenes through 
which we pass. The free park-like charm 
of some of them merely seems refreshing in 
contrast with the architectonic dignity of 
those we have just left ; or, if we come first 
upon the naturalistic parts, they merely ac- 
cent the impressiveness of those which en- 
circle or lead up to the palace. 

For an example of an opposite sort we 
may look once more at our Central Park. 
Here is a distinctly naturalistic scheme. 
No large pleasure-ground, encircled by city 
streets, could be less formal in general idea, 
more rural in general effect. Yet its chief 
feature is the Mall — a wide straight walk, 
symmetrically planted with rows of elm- 
trees, and ending upon an architectural ter- 
race with flights of stairs descending to the 
plaza at the edge of the lake. Nothing in 
the park is more beautiful than the harmoni- 
ous contrast we note when, standing on this 
terrace, we look in one direction dovrn the 
formal Mall, and in the other across the 
169 



Art Out-of-Doors 



water to the naturalistic opposite shore of 
the lake. 

Each of these prospects gains in charm 
b}^ its artistic opposition to the other ; and 
even when we are far away from the ter- 
race, the Mall plays a necessary part in the 
scene. It was needed in such a park to 
accommodate great crowds of pedestrians ; 
and what is needed in a park must, if skil- 
fully introduced, increase its beauty by in- 
creasing the force and truth of its expres- 
sion. The Mall gives just the one strong 
touch of confessed art which was required, 
in the centre of this big naturalistic pleasure- 
ground, to prove that it is a public pleas- 
ure - ground and not a stretch of pastoral 
country or a private domain with an exces- 
sive number of roads and paths. It v^as 
needed to emphasize the artistic character of 
the general scheme, and to prepare the eye 
for such other formalities and artificialities 
as are required in a much frequented public 
resort. It says in unmistakable accents that 
the whole scheme is non-natural ; that the 
purpose of the neighboring landscape-pict- 
ures is not to make people believe that they 
170 



Formal Gardening 



are in the country, but merely to suggest the 
country ; not to assume rusticity, but to 
typify it ; not to affect naturahiess, but to be 
craftily, carefully, poetically naturalistic. 

The Thiergarten in Berlin is probably 
the finest naturalistic urban park in all Eu- 
rope. Some of its portions are vvilder- 
looking, more distinctly naturalistic, than 
any parts of Central Park. But through its 
whole breadth runs a wide formal space, with 
straight drives and walks, richly adorned 
with works of sculpture, and appropriate- 
ly planted. And so it always must be : 
useful, and therefore artificial, features are 
required in all pleasure - grounds, now of 
a large and bold and again of a less obtru- 
sive sort ; and the franker the expression 
of their purpose, the better as a rule the 
result will be. 

We do not yet realize the fact, but when 
grounds are small the formal style, in some 
of its phases, is more easily managed than 
the naturalistic. And this is not the only 
reason why I wish that it were more often 
attempted by American hands. 

171 



Art Out-of -Doors 



We are not likely to have in America 
many country houses so large and stately 
that they would justify a return to the 
grand ideals of Le Notre — that they would 
look beautiful and appropriate surrounded 
by vast formal parks. Nor are such parks 
suited to American rural surroundings, to 
the ideals of a democratic nation, or to the 
manners of living of even our idlest and 
wealthiest people. But the great excuse for 
a formal manipulation of Nature's materials 
is, we know, the dominance of other formal 
elements in the given locality ; and this fact 
proves that formal gardening may rightly be 
applied to our smallest types of pleasure- 
ground, although it would be unsuited to our 
largest types. In many American towns, 
and many American summer colonies of cot- 
tages or villas, formal gardens might pro- 
duce a very beautiful effect, and a very much 
more appropriate effect than is now achieved 
by our attempts at landscape-gardening on a 
miniature scale. 

In a really rustic colony where the houses 
are very simple and the character of the en- 
circling landscapes has not been much al- 

172 



Formal Gardening 



tered from its virginal estate, a formal gar- 
den, no matter how small and modest, would 
be too palpably artificial. We should not 
want to see even the old New England door- 
yard, with its box-bordered beds, reproduced 
on a Catskill mountain-side, under the shade 
of ancient hemlocks, with a panorama of 
wild woodland scenery showing beyond it ; 
nor, again, in front of a rough seaside cot- 
tage, on the edge of a beach with its fringe 
of wild-growing shrubs and creepers and 
flowers. But would formal gardens of this, 
or even of a much more boldly architectural 
kind, be unfitting in the main streets of our 
little towns, in the outlying villa - streets 
of our towns of the second and the third 
class, along the fine boulevards of big de- 
tached houses which are characteristic of 
many of our great Western cities, or in lux- 
urious summer-resorts like Newport ? 

At Newport especially I have often wished 
that someone — architect, owner, or gar- 
dener — had had the wit to see how charm- 
ing and how individual he might make his 
domain by some formal method of treat- 
ment. Of course I do not speak of the 

173 



Art Out-of-Doors 



larger estates which are being estabhshed 
toward the rocky end of the promontory, or 
of the more spacious of the gromids which 
front upon the avenues. But scores of 
Newport houses which are called cottages, 
but in reality are large and sometimes very 
pompous villas or even mansions, stand in 
very small grounds, and here some degree 
of formality certainly seems desirable. Here 
architecture certainly dominates the general 
picture, and if the grounds are to be appro- 
priate and to assert their own importance 
they may well be given an architectonic 
character. 

Vvliat are such grounds to-day ? If some 
measure of taste has illumined their guard- 
ians, they are, perhaps, green little lawns 
cut by one or two lines of gravel and encir- 
cled by naturalistic groups of trees and 
shrubs. Then they are pretty in them- 
selves, but not dignified enough, not con- 
sciously artistic enough — I may say, not ar- 
tificial enough — to befit their service as 
adjuncts to a large costly house and as fore- 
grounds over which, from the house, one 
sees the rigid lines of the street and the 
174 



Formal Gardening 



symmetrical forms of neighboring build- 
ings. 

But most often no taste at all has pre- 
sided over their disposition, except a greedy 
love for conspicuous plants as such ; and 
then they are hideous as well as inappro- 
priate. They are huddled little conglomera- 
tions of trees and showy shrubs, and of bits 
of grass splashed with chromo - like flower- 
beds, and speckled with exotic plants vrhich 
have recently been brought from the green- 
house and loudly confess their homesickness 
for tropical surroundings. Most often we 
feel that the owner's or the gardener's one 
desire has been to get as much variety as he 
could within his narrow limits. As a result 
he has entirely lost the unity which alone 
can give relief and value to variety. His 
garden has no coherence, no character ; it is 
a place in which plants are grown, but not 
a place which as a whole makes any impres- 
sion upon the eye, except to confuse and 
pain it. Nowhere better than at Newport 
can we understand what a French artist 
meant when he said that most people's idea 
of gardening is ''the cleaning up of spon- 

175 



Art Out-of-Doors 



taneous vegetation followed by the ac- 
cumulation of strange and dissimilar ob- 
jects." Most people, in truth, go to work 
in their gardens as they would in their 
houses if they should bring in a bric-a-brac 
dealer's stock and arrange it after the meth- 
od which prevailed in his shop. Such a 
house would not be fit to live in, and the 
majority of our small gardens are not fit to 
look at. 

Nor is true variety evident when, in a 
place like Newport, we pass a long series of 
gardens in review. How little their owners 
really care about them, or even about the 
plants they contain, is clearly proved not 
only by their lack of design, but by their 
perpetual repetition of the same small list 
of showy plants and flowers. Inside their 
houses these people want an artistic general 
scheme, worked out with details which shall 
not be exactly the same as their neighbors'. 
Outside they care nothing at all for any 
scheme, and want, apparently, to show that 
they are in the fashion by having precisely 
the same furnishings as the man next door. 

It would be pleasant indeed if a formally 
176 



Formal Gardening 



disposed garden sometimes met the eye 
among these would-be naturahstic gardens ; 
or, to speak more exactly, among these gar- 
dens which reveal no desire to follow any 
style that can be fitted with a name — which 
are merely irregular in the worst meaning 
of the word. Whatever the designer's suc- 
cess might be in bringing beauty out of his 
formal scheme, the result would show at 
least that he had had some scheme in mind, 
some plan, some intention, some definite 
idea ; and where good results are almost 
entirely lacking, even a visible good inten- 
tion excites approval. 

Where villa-grounds are large enough to 
demand a drive-way to the door, a straight 
avenue symmetrically bordered by trees 
might often advantageously replace the road 
w^hich now winds about on level soil simply 
because someone has thought curves always 
essential, and which therefore cuts up the 
space without the excuse of either increased 
usefulness or increased beauty. Such an 
avenue would imply, of course, some meas- 
ure of formality in its immediate neighbor- 

177 



Art Out-of -Doors 



hood ; but farther away the design might 
gradually pass into informality, until a nat- 
uralistic plantation of shrubs should encircle 
the boundaries and mask all but the most 
desirable points of outlook from the house. 

In smaller grounds a more consistently 
formal scheme would often be appropriate — 
some truly architectural arrangement of 
trees and shrubs and flower-beds. And 
there are spots in Newport where an artist 
would hardly object even if the trees and 
shrubs were cKpped to symmetrical shapes. 
In the very smallest grounds one or two trees 
near the house or the gate might suffice, and 
the whole of the ground be given up to a 
formal flovvxr-garden, either wuth plots of 
grass and French parterres, as in the little 
parks of Paris, or with freely growing flow- 
ers in rectangular box - edged borders, af- 
ter the old colonial scheme, or even with 
carpet-bedding carefully designed and con- 
sistently employed, as in the courtyard of 
Charlecote Hall — a background of gravel 
being preferable then to the background of 
grass which usually throws the vivid colors 
of such beds into undue rehef. Very small 

17S 



Formal Gardening 



rectangular grounds thus turned into flower- 
gardens would often be more appropriate to 
their situation than even the best attempts 
at naturahstic gardening on a tiny scale ; 
and they would also give more delight to 
their owners, if any true love for flowers re- 
sides in their breasts. Where one has not 
room for a genuine landscape - picture, or 
where such a picture does not harmonize 
with what lies around it, are we not foolish 
to neglect the beauty which artistic arrange- 
ments of flowers alone can give ? 

Even w^ithout flowers or spreading shrubs 
a very small bit of ground can be made at- 
tractive. Nothing is prettier, when its sur- 
roundings justify it, than a close, graceful 
pattern wrought in lines of box or some sim- 
ilar plant, with a stretch of gravel for a 
background, and some accentuation in the 
way of formally shaped shrubs like Irish 
yev/s and pyramidal junipers. And, as I 
have said before, flower-gardens and places 
for collections of specimen plants will some- 
times be desired. If the main grounds are 
naturalistically arranged, they should be 
put where they will not injure the general 



179 



Art Out-of-Doors 



picture ; and if they are thus set apart a 
formal method of arrangement will agree- 
ably contrast with the informality around it, 
and will be most convenient also. • 

But I do not want to attempt to lay out 
gardens at Newport or anywhere else. I 
only w^ant to show that more kinds of gar- 
dens may be appropriate and beautiful than 
our very vague and crude philosophy has 
yet taught us to dream about. 

A professed landscape-gardener — I cannot 
say it too often — v\^ill almost invariably be 
needed when a naturalistic scheme of any 
extent is desired ] but every architect ought 
to be able to design a small formal garden, 
and every gardener ought to be able to de- 
velop it. Neither the average American 
architect nor the average American gardener 
has this power to-day j but that is merely 
because neither of them has learned his own 
trade properly. Every architect ought to 
know something about the requirements of 
the surroundings of a home, but few of ours 
even know hov/ to choose its site reasona- 
bly well. Every gardener ought to know at 
iSo 



Formal Gardening 



least the rudiments of the art of combining 
lines, masses, and colors ; but most of ours 
merely know how to make plants take root 
and flourish. 

Especially should we gain in our large 
cities if the architect who does public work 
took an interest in gardening and were al- 
lowed to express it. Now, when a fine 
public building fronts on a little park, this 
is usually left as it may have chanced to re- 
main from the time when it was a private 
garden or a bit of the fields ; or, if it is re- 
arranged, the effort is to make it look like a 
fragment of a landscape. And when the 
open space is smaller it is left as plain turf, 
or is dotted with purposeless single plants 
and scarred with loud isolated beds of co- 
leus. Greater beauty, greater dignity, a truer 
expression of the purpose of the spot as a 
forecourt to an important structure, might 
usually be attained by the use of consistent- 
ly formal or of semi -formal arrangements. 
And often we see city spaces where a flower- 
garden would indisputably be the best de- 
vice. 

All people like flowers, and no one loves 
i8i 



Art Out-of-Doors 



them better than the poorest people in our 
largest towns. This fact is always cited in 
excuse for the defacement of naturahstic de- 
signs, like the Boston Public Garden, with a 
multitude of flower-beds ; and it is a fact 
against which inteUigent lovers of our great 
urban parks must perpetually fight lest their 
pastoral scenes be similarly ruined. But it 
is not a fact against which we should always 
fight ; rather, it is one which should be 
gladly accepted and carefully considered by 
the guardians of our public grounds. Wher- 
ever a flower-garden can appropriately be 
made within crowded city limits, there, I 
am sure, one should be made ; and not only 
for the sake of the people's delight, but also 
for the sake of the integrity of the naturalis- 
tic parks. If we had in New York a proper 
place for a fine floral display, no one would 
have an excuse for demanding, as some peo- 
ple continually do, that there should be 
more flower-beds in Central Park. Such a 
spot as the little triangle where Broadway 
and Sixth Avenue meet — which now shows 
a bit of grass, one ragged pine-tree, two or 
three straggling bushes, and a hideously 
182 



Formal Gardening 



sliaped bed of coleus — would look extremely 
well if consistently planted with flowers. 
And when the old reservoir on Fifth Avenue 
is removed J we should have in its place, not 
a mere extension of Bryant Park, but a 
beautiful big garden, with formal avenues 
of trees to give shade, a balustraded walk 
around its confines, a large ornamental 
fountain, and a rich array of fiower-beds, 
charmingly changing their aspect as the 
montlis advance, and telling to those who 
never leave the streets how, in the country, 
Flora is marshalling ^^the procession of the 
flowers." 

There can be no American city where 
spots similar to these do not actually cry 
aloud for formal treatment of some sort. 
And there are one or two American cities 
where the charm of formal or semi -formal 
arrangements has already been shown. In 
Baltimore, for instance, when one stands in 
IMount Vernon Place, or on the adjacent 
wide sloping street where central plantations 
are enlivened by the perpetual sound of fall- 
ing water, one can hardly believe he is in 
our crude young America, so finished and 
1S3 



Art Out-of-Doors 



artistic is the scene, so eminently appropri- 
ate as the central feature of a large town, so 
restful and dignified in its architectonic sim- 
plicity. 

And there is even more than this to be 
said in behalf of formal gardening. When 
a stately house is surrounded by a large nat- 
uralistic park there is sometimes a look of 
incompleteness, of disharmony, no matter 
how skilfully the planter may have worked 
near the house- walls and around their base. 
Certain English vrriters tell us that a house 
ought never to stand thus in close contact 
with informally arranged grounds — that 
there ought always to be a symmetrical gar- 
den in fi'ont of it, or at least some arrange- 
ment of terraces and regular plantations. 
xAnd others, of course, say just the reverse, 
finding their ideal in those English man- 
sions whose walls rise straight and simple 
from encircling lakes of turf. 

Truth lies, once more, between these two 
extremes. Sometimes architectonic design 
is evidently needed in the grounds adjoin- 
ing the house ; but sometimes unity and 

184 



Formal Gardening 



harmony of effect can be complete without 
it, and its introduction would ruin the 
place. The only right theory is that no 
theory is always right — that good sense 
and good taste must dictate the specially 
appropriate solution for each special prob- 
lem. 

I may say, however, that as a rule Amer- 
ican country houses of the typical kind do 
not need terraces as much as they are needed 
by the characteristic English house. Our 
piazzas play, to a great extent, the role 
of architectural terraces. Once, we know, 
they were merely elongated sheds and had 
little artistic significance of any kind. But 
to-day, with their foundations of brick or 
stone, their parapets or balustrades, and their 
dignified flights of steps, they are really cov- 
ered terraces, and may enable us often to 
dispense with an actual terrace where other- 
wise it would be essential. 

If our architects fully understood their 
opportunities they would naturally decide 
such points as these. But the Capitol at 
Washington is a striking instance of the 
fact that a landscape-architect may have a 

185 



Art Out-of -Doors 



keener vision, a truer artistic sense, than 
they. It was not an architect, it was Mr. 
Olmsted, who first saw how greatly the 
Capitol, on the side which faces the city, 
might be improved by the addition of a 
wide and high architectural terrace. The 
beauty of the building itself has been much 
increased by this terrace, which adds to its 
apparent height and thus betters its propor- 
tions ; and it is now integrally united by 
the terrace to the sloping gardens which 
stretch away in front of it. 

What has been done here might with cor- 
responding advantage be done to some large 
country houses that I happen to remember, 
while I know others that would be utterly 
spoiled if the simple way in which their 
foundations rise from the soil were disturbed 
by terracing, or by formal arrangements of 
any sort. There is no rule — there are only 
principles ; and these principles only an ar- 
tist vrho knows something of both architec- 
ture and gardening is likely to apply with 
justness. No definite ideal can be cherished, 
to the exclusion of others, by a person who 
wants to produce good results upon canvases 

i86 



Formal Gardening 



where Nature has prepared for his work. 
Each and every new problem needs new 
consideration. Each, as Andre says, " needs 
individual taste, the touch of the artist, who 
should above all be guided by art, and who 
often will have to struggle against the exac- 
tions of his client and against his own ten- 
dency to give free course to that will-o'-the- 
wisp which is so difficult to fetter — the im- 
agination.*' 

And Emerson tells us the same thing in 
his own trenchant fashion: ^^It is best to 
pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to 
buy good sense applied to gardening.'* We 
shall never be well served by theories that 
this style is right and this is wrong, that 
one method of treatment or one kind of 
feature is beautiful, and other methods, other 
features, are inartistic. We shall be well 
served only by good sense, taking account 
of particular local facts, and based upon 
principles which themselves are based upon 
the same great laws that direct intelligent 
effort in all the other arts. Simplicity, 
harmony, appropriateness, variety in unity 
— clear expressions of clearly conceived and 

187 



Art Out-of-Doors 



fitting schemes — these are the results to be 
desired in our parks and country homes as 
in our pictures, our statues and our city- 
houses. 



i88 



IX 

A Word for Architecture 



All is fine that is fit." 



IX 



MERICANS are gradually learn- 
ing that fitness, appropriate- 
ness, is the foundation of all 
artistic excellence ; and though 
the lesson is not yet fully acquired, we are 
making visible progress toward the realiza- 
tion of this quality in our various classes of 
buildings. The improvement is perhaps 
most manifest in our country houses, which 
we design with a more intelligent regard 
for the requirements of site and environ- 
ment than we did even ten years ago, and a 
truer sense of the fact that in such houses 
simplicity is a cardinal virtue. There has 
been a reaction against conventionality on 
the one hand and against ostentation on the 
other, and it has been inspired by a new- 
born feeling for architectural fitness. 

But in a reaction men are almost certain 
to go too far, and so it is not surprising to 
find that in trying for simplicity we some- 

191 




Art Out-of -Doors 



times fall into rudeness. This shows, of 
course, that we have not fully understood 
the meaning of fitness as an architectural 
term j we have rememxbered that a structure 
should harmonize with its surroundings, but 
have forgotten that it should also harmonize 
with the spirit of cultivated men and women 
who are the heirs of all the ages, living in a 
state of high civihzation, and inheriting the 
practical processes as well as the tastes of 
countless generations of skilful builders. 
And thus, moreover, we have often missed 
even true simplicity; for civilized, intelli- 
gent men can produce rude-looking structures 
only by an effort so deliberate and self-con- 
scious that it lays them open to the charge 
of affectation. 

No one need object to an Adirondack 
camp, a fishing-lodge, or a hill-side studio, 
if it is rough and rude. It is designed as 
a shelter for a semi-civilized sort of exist- 
ence, and may be as appropriate to the 
temporary needs of its inhabitants as to 
the wild scenes amid v>'hich it stands. But 
when costly buildings in civilized neighbor- 

192 



A Word for Architecture 



hoods are constructed for permanent use in 
imitation of the materials and methods nat- 
urally adopted for temporary homes in the 
wilderness or for pioneers' cabins, neither 
the interests of true simplicity nor those of 
true appropriateness are served. 

The tendency to which I refer finds many 
illustrations in the use of bowlders or rough- 
ly cut stones in constructions which should 
wear a refined and dignified as well as a 
simple aspect. Undoubtedly, this practice 
has been largely inspired by the example of 
Richardson. An architect so original, strong, 
and skilful as he, could not fail to influence 
profoundly the general course of his art; 
and, as with every great master, this influ- 
ence has been partly for good, partly for 
evil. No other small building in this coun- 
try has been so often described, pictured, 
and discussed as the gardener's lodge which 
he built, of huge rough bowlders, in the vil- 
lage of North Easton, near Boston. It is, 
indeed, a picturesque and interesting piece 
of work, but it has certainly been imitated 
in ways which Richardson never anticipat- 
ed, and he would certainly have been dis- 
193 



Art Out-of -Doors 



tressed by a sight of the progeny it has en- 
gendered. 

In certain places and for certain purposes 
the use of bowlders, whether large or small, 
is not only allowable but praiseworthy. It 
is both sensible and appropriate to use them, 
for example, in the foundations or the base- 
ment of a country house on land where they 
abound and can be had at little cost and 
trouble. But even in such spots as this it 
is seldom desirable that a house should be 
wholly built of them, for we do not want an 
American country home to wear the unre- 
fined and ponderous aspect which the unal- 
loyed employment of them gives. 

In other parts of the country one may 
wisely use, instead of bowlders and for a 
similar purpose, stones roughly split from 
neighboring granite-ledges ; but, again, and 
for the same reasons, it is seldom well thus 
to construct an entire house. We want sim- 
plicity and we want solidity, but we do not 
want coarseness or the affectation of sim- 
plicity. A house with an interior such as 
every American demands, made comfortable 
by a hundred ingenious devices, and beauti- 

194 



A Word for Architecture 



ful by the skilled work of a score of different 
artisans, should have an exterior of conso- 
nant expression ; and rough-hewn stones or 
roughly cemented bowlders cannot give this 
expression. 

But it is not only in country homes that 
our methods of using stone are often erro- 
neous. Country churches and public build- 
ings, and even the most ambitious city 
structures, frequently prove bad taste in 
this respect. Even in urban parks an ex- 
aggerated effort to adapt the architectural 
work to rural surroundings is a departure 
from genuine simplicity. A park is one of 
the most complicated and elaborate of artis- 
tic creations ; and its unity and beauty are 
impaired if any feature fails to show the 
same kind and degree of skill and refine- 
ment as are shown by those which accom- 
pany it. No matter how rural in character 
a park may be, or how pure and undisturbed 
the sylvan charm of some of its remoter 
parts, there is no place where all the work 
of man ought to be done with greater care, 
more perfect finish, or, very often (using 

195 



Art Out-of-Doors 



the term in its best sense), a franker arti- 
ficiality. 

Almost all work is done in this manner in 
our parks. Their driveways are not con- 
structed like country roads of even the bet- 
ter sort j their lawns are not left as fields 
of untended grass : nor are their shrubberies 
allowed to grow with the wild luxuriance 
which is so beautiful beside a rural high- 
way. The engineer and the horticulturist 
show, in our parks, the highest level to 
which modern science and art have at- 
tained, and the architect should work in a 
spirit similar to theirs. Structures which 
look rough, casual, almost barbaric, and af- 
fectedly simple, are not appropriate in a care- 
fully tended pleasure-ground planted with 
exotic trees and flowers, and bisected by 
scientifically built and neatly curbed roads, 
even though we may know that as much 
thought and pains have been spent on their 
construction as if the outconie had been 
more patently artistic and refined. 

Central Park was laid out before the pres- 
ent taste for bowlders and rough-hewn stones 
had developed, and in it one may study the 
196 



A Word for Architecture 



right methods of treating the architectural 
features of such a spot. Here and there, in 
quiet corners and shady nooks, we find 
rougli httle fiiglits of steps and rustic sum- 
mer-houses of unhewn wood ; but in all 
conspicuous places, and for all important 
constructions, work of a more pohshed and 
artificial sort is employed. But in the new 
Franklin Park at Boston, for example, there 
are structures in the most prominent situa- 
tions which would seem more appropriate in 
a vroody glen, miles away from any town. 
A drinking-fountain, carefully built of jag- 
ged stones to look as if carelessly thrown 
together for a temporary purpose, may have 
a beauty of its own ; but it is not fitly 
placed beside the principal building and 
near the principal drivCAvay of an urban 
park. And steps of rude slabs, scarcely re- 
vealing the touch of the chisel, do not seem 
appropriate in contact with the accurately 
shaped and smoothed curbing of such a 
drive. 

In building the gateways at the principal 
entrance to this beautifully designed pleasure- 
ground, the aim seems to have been to make 

197 



Art Out-of-Doors 



them inconspicuous, and thus to disturb as 
little as possible the rural effect of the out- 
look from neighboring higher points over 
the distant country. But the existence of 
gateways, and their eminently artificial char- 
acter, cannot be disguised ; and to build 
them wholly of small bowlders and drape 
them as thickly as possible with foliage, is 
to sacrifice art and appropriateness to an 
unattainable end. A comparison of these 
gateways with those recently erected at one 
of the southern entrances to Prospect Park 
would prove, I think, that the more confess- 
edly artistic such w^orks of art are made, the 
better is their effect. 

Under the Propylaea of the Athenians one 
entered, not a park, but a small enclosure 
thickly filled with buildings and statues. 
But through and over it he who stood on 
the Acropolis saw lovely stretches of open 
country and a magnificent panorama of sea 
and island-shores. Would this have looked 
better, do you think — would it have looked 
more beautiful or even more rural — had the 
stately range of chiselled columns been re- 
placed by a picturesque rustic " construc- 

198 



A Word for Architecture 



tion of rough stones covered with vines ? Of 
course I do not want to draw too close a 
comparison. A park is not a temple-enclos- 
ure ; the landscape near Athens is not like 
the landscape near Boston ; and he who 
looks from the Acropolis toward Salamis is 
not in the same mood as he who stands on 
a picturesque height and looks over ^Massa- 
chusetts fields and hills. But when a rule 
in art is fundamental, it holds good for 
broad application in all parts of the world 
and in all kinds of work. I think it is a 
fundamental rule that, while the art which 
really conceals art may be great, the art 
which tries to conceal what cannot be con- 
cealed is ahvays mistaken. And architect- 
ural features cannot be concealed, cannot be 
made to look naturalistic, as may an artist's 
manipulation of ground-surfaces, water-bor- 
ders, and plantations. 

Even for bridges rough, unhewn stones 
are nov\- often used, and in bridges they are 
particularly inappropriate. How can an 
arch look well when it does not look stable? 
And how can it look stable when its vous- 



199 



Art Out-of-Doors 



soirs are of irregular shapes and unequal 
lengths, so that they appear less to be bra- 
cing up than to be sliding past each other ? 
Richardson's idea of the way in which a 
bridge in a naturalistically treated pleasure- 
ground ought to be built is shown by the 
one that carries Boylston Street across the 
Fens in Boston-. It is a large bridge and 
entirely devoid of ornament — perfectly plain 
and simple above and below. Bat the wide, 
graceful, sinewy sweep of its arch, its beau- 
tifully modelled buttresses and coping, and 
the well-regulated shape and carefully fin- 
ished surface of all its stones, make it as 
true and refined and as noteworthy a work 
of art as any of the more elaborate things 
that Richardson ever built. Indeed, if I 
were asked to point out a quite perfect 
piece of Richardson's handiwork, I think I 
should point to this bridge. Not far away 
from it stands another bridge, with three 
arches, built in the now prevalent rustic " 
manner. In general design it is very good, 
and were its fabric as architectural and its 
finish as perfect as its neighbor's, the two 
would form a most happy contrast. But 



200 



A Word for Architecture 



now it looks weak despite its actual solidity, 
and careless despite the very careful study 
that must have been bestowed upon it. 

All over the country we find, in street 
and park and private country-place, hun- 
dreds of architectural things which lack the 
merits of this bridge and have more than its 
defects. Many of them, so pronounced has 
been the effort to secure simplicity, seem to 
take us back to the very infancy of art, 
when there were not even steel tools to work 
with, but only hatchets of bronze. But of 
course they do not strike us as simple ; of 
course we do not believe for a moment that 
this was the most natural way for their 
builders to work. They strike us as exces- 
sively sophisticated, self-conscious, affected. 
They are not protests against over-elabora- 
tion. They are — in effect if not in inten- 
tion — elaborate protests against the existence 
of architecture as an art. 



20I 



X 

Out-Door Monuments 



" A statue in a garden is to be considered as one 
part of a scene or landscape." 

— Sbenslone, 



X 




HREE questions suggest them- 
selves when we look at a mon- 
ument which stands in a public 
park or square or street : Does 



the person or event commemorated deserve 
such conspicuous and lasting honor ? Is the 
monument excellent as a work of art ? And 
is it so placed that it appears to the best 
advantage itself, and increases the beauty of 
its surroundings ? 

If our public places are to be fittingly 
adorned, two of these questions should be 
carefully considered every time that an out- 
door monument is proposed. The first, I 
think, may be left to take care of itself. 
Public monuments, at least in this country, 
are not likely to be decreed to persons or 
causes unworthy of respect. And if some 
are set up to record the existence of men in 
whom the public at large feels little interest, 
we need not object to their presence for this 



Art Out-of-Doors 



reason alone. If a work of art is agreeable 

to look upon, we may be glad to possess it 
even if it commemorates a well-meaning no- 
body. 

But the question of artistic excellence is 
very important, and not only from the 
purely artistic point of view. A bad v/ork 
of art bearing the name of a great man de- 
grades his memory, persistently imprinting 
upon the people's mind a weak or false or 
grotesque idea of him. Who can be won 
to admiration of the poet by the contorted, 
ridiculous figure at the entrance of the Mall 
in Central Park, which bears the name 
of Burns ? Or who can gain a fresh sense 
of the service which Seward rendered the 
Republic by contemplating his statue on 
Madison Square ? But Farragut is really 
commemorated, really honored, by the fig- 
ure which stands not far away from the 
Seward. Each time we pass it we think 
with gratitude and admiration of him, while 
we receive an impression of pleasure from 
the sight of the work of art as such. Nor 
need it be thought that the humblest among 
206 



Out-Door Monuments 



the people are blind and deaf to the differ- 
ence, in aspect and message, between such 
works as these two. Hundreds of persons 
of all classes daily stop to study the Farra- 
gut statue, while, if we watch at the other 
end of the park, we find that scarcely a 
glance is ever directed to the Seward. St. 
Gaudens's statue of Lincoln not only adorns 
the city of Chicago and teaches its people 
what sculptor's work should be, but helps 
to interpret the greatest of Americans to 
generations that never knew him. It is im- 
possible to think that it will not have great 
influence upon the conscience and patriotism 
of the youth of Chicago. But will the youth 
of New York profit much by the Lincoln 
statue on Union Square ? And who has ever 
cared to inform himself about Bolivar af- 
ter seeing his grotesque equestrian figure in 
Central Park ? 

The proportion of bad monuments to 
good ones in any American city to-day is 
probably at least ten to one ; and the col- 
lective effect of so many poor works in de- 
forming our public places, and discouraging, 



207 



Art Out-of-Doors 



if not corrupting, the popular love of art, 
can hardly be over-estimated. It is worth 
while, therefore, to try to discover some of 
the reasons w^hy our monuments are so sel- 
dom good. 

They might, as a rule, be much more suc- 
cessful but for a common mistake in their 
first conception — a mistake against which 
intelhgent sculptors have long protested in 
vain. Nine times out of ten a full-length 
figure is insisted upon when a bust, or an 
architectural monument with a fitting in- 
scription and, perhaps, a portrait-head in 
relief, would be all-sufficient and, indeed, 
distinctly more appropriate. This perpet- 
ual demand for full-length figures works in 
two ways against the sculptor's success. 

In the first place, the average of physical 
dignity and beauty in our race is not very 
high ; many men since St. Paul have been 
weak in their bodily presence, although 
giants in intellectual and moral ways ; and 
since the time of St. Paul there has been a 
great change for the worse in masculine cos- 
tume, judged from the artist's point of view. 
The modern portrait-sculptor has fallen upon 

208 



Out-Door Monuments 



hard times ; why make his trouble greater 
by insisting that he shall portray the whole 
body in cases where not the body but the 
mind of the man is what we really wish to 
commemorate ? 

In the second place, it is as difficult in 
cases such as this to evolve an appropriate 
conception of a full-length figure as to exe- 
cute it beautifully when it is found. Unless 
a man's physical presence has been promi- 
nently associated with his service to the pub- 
lic, how shall it be posed and presented so 
. as to express any clear and dignified idea ? 
The broad rule seems to be that a man of 
action should be portrayed at full length, 
standing or mounted as the case may be, 
and that, for men who have labored rather 
with the brain alone than with brain and 
body together, a seated figure is sometimes 
desirable, while, most often, a portrait of the 
head alone will suffice. No one would be 
satisfied with a figure of Sherman except on 
horseback ; a bust of Farragut could never 
have expressed him as does our bold quar- 
ter-deck figure ; nor could a great orator be 
fully characterized except as standing upon 



209 



Art Out-of-Doors 



his feet. But we can fancy a chief-justice^ 
for example, best portrayed in a sitting 
posture : and it might seem as though this 
were the natural aspect to choose for Lincoln 
did not the Chicago statue prove that a 
great artist may see deeper than ordinary 
mortals, and, working more boldly than 
they might counsel, may treat his theme 
more clearly and fully. In this monument 
the chair of State behind the figure explains 
one phase of Lincoln's service, while the 
erect yet reflective pose of the figure de- 
clares that the man who filled this chair was 
a great orator upon occasion, and was not 
only the people's executive but their lead- 
er in a crisis demanding energetic action. 

Thus we see that two things should be 
considered in the conception of a monu- 
ment : We should reflect upon the charac- 
ter of the services rendered by its subject, 
and also upon the bodily presence Provi- 
dence bestowed upon him, and then decide 
whether a statue, a bust, or some still less 
personal kind of memorial should be chosen. 
A bust of Holmes or Whittier would be 
much better than a statue j but this fact 



2IO 



Out-Door Monuments 



does not decide matters for all literary men. 
Think, for instance, of Carlyle. His more 
strongly marked personality, more energetic 
cast of mind, needed to be shown — as they 
are in the seated statue near his old home at 
Chelsea — through a rendering of his tall, 
gaunt form and voluminous cloak. An in- 
telligent artist will not find it hard to de- 
cide this question of appropriateness in the 
scheme of monuments ; but, unfortunately, 
the artist is often the person who has the 
least to say about it. 

Even in the interests of mere variety we 
might well wish for a wider difference in the 
conception of our monuments. But to bring 
it about in satisfactory ways we must depend 
less exclusively than hitherto upon the art 
of sculpture. When a sculptor designs a 
group or figure an architect should give it a 
fitting pedestal. Those who have seen the 
Chicago Lincoln know how vastly the effect 
of the figure is increased by the bold yet 
quiet and dignified character of the sub- 
structure, excellently adapted not only to 
the figure itself but to the chosen site ; and 



211 



Art Out-of -Doors 



a large part of the impressiveness of the 
Farragut in Madison Square depends upon 
the size and ornamentation of its base, al- 
though, from the architectural point of 
view, the design is not as good as it ought 
to be. But very poor or very inappropri- 
ate bases are still the rule — bases designed 
by men who may be good sculptors but 
have no architectural knowledge, or left to 
the discretion of the persons w^ho supply 
the stone. 

Occasionally we even see an instance of 
their total abolition, in curious disregard of 
that fundamental rule which mere common- 
sense might teach, and which says that a 
work of art must always be confessed and 
emphasized as such. In Central Park Mr. 
Kemys's fine figure of an American panther 
crouching for its spring is set, v/ithout any 
pedestal, on the top of a vine-covered rock 
overhanging the driveway. I believe this 
was done against the sculptor's protest ; and 
certainly no true artist would sanction so 
puerile an effort to pretend that a bronze 
figure is a living animal. Again, on the 
Gettysburg battle-field, the statue of an offi- 



212 



Out-Door Monuments 



cer, glass in hand, is placed on the edge of 
an abrupt, lo^', rocky hill, without any base 
except the necessary thin plate of bronze be- 
neath the feet. To persons looking from 
below it may wxll appear, at the first glance, 
the figure of a living man. But this is not a 
worthy aim in the making of a work of art. 
Even a very good statue could not fail to 
seem cheap and trivial thus deprived of 
proper station and emphasis. 

But right placing is as important with re- 
gard to out-door monuments as intrinsic ex- 
cellence. A beautiful statue may be shorn 
of half its effect if badly stationed ; a good 
substructure can rarely be designed unless 
the destined station is exactly known ; and, 
on the other hand, a fine bit of landscape 
or a dignified open space in a city street 
may be seriously injured by the inappropri- 
ateness even of a work that is meritorious in 
itself. 

It should be remembered, first of all, that, 
as a monument is a palpably artificial thing, 
the best place for it is where other artifi- 
cial objects are conspicuous. In a park, it 
213 



Art Out-of-Doors 



should be set at the intersection of roads or 
paths, on a terrace, near a building, or at 
the side of a formal avenue. No better sit- 
uation for statues of certain kinds could be 
imagined than the Mall in Central Park, 
where a long double row, alternating Vv'ith 
the symmetrically spaced elms, would great- 
ly increase the stately beauty of the prome- 
nade as well as its interest to the people 
who frequent it. Commonwealth Avenue 
in Boston, with its wide open walk between 
double rows of trees, flanked by two drive- 
ways, looks as though specially designed for 
the reception of monuments : and it will be 
well if the entrance avenue of Druid Park 
in Baltimore some day sees its rows of mo- 
notonous, ugly urns, suggestive only of the 
Forty Thieves, replaced by varied yet har- 
monizing works of art. In Washington ex- 
cellent situations, especially for equestrian 
statues or groups, are offered by the large 
circles and triangles which so frequently 
break the lines of radiating streets ; and, of 
course, every city has certain little squares 
and open corners where, alone or in com- 
bination with trees and shrubs, monuments 



214 



Out-Door Monuments 



of one sort or another are eminently appro- 
priate. 

The French usually show better taste 
than ourselves in the placing of their works 
of sculpture, and the great Luxembourg and 
Tuileries gardens are adorned by many works 
which are beautifully displayed by their en- 
vironment. But the French are apt to be 
less skilful in deahng with a naturalistic park 
than with formal gardens such as these, and 
so they sometimes make mistakes as pa- 
tent as our own. In the Pare Monceau in 
Paris, for instance, several bronze figures 
and groups are set at a distance from the 
road in the centre of wide quiet stretches of 
lawn, and the arrangement is bad for two 
reasons : the repose of the lawns is dis- 
turbed and their natural character injured 
by the presence of conspicuous artificial feat- 
ures, and the statues are too far from the 
spectator's eye to be thoroughly well appre- 
ciated. 

But a site which is fitting for a statue may 
not be fitting for any statue. The question of 
scale is very important — the question of the 
right relationship in size of the work of art 

215 



Art Out-of-Doors 



to its environment. The figure of Webster 
in Central Park stands in an excellent place, 
in the centre of a large circle where two 
wide driveways cross. But it makes a poor 
effect, and not only because it is weak in 
conception and mechanical in execution. 
It is also out of scale. It is so large that it 
dwarfs alike the neighboring trees and the 
passing figures of living men. In another 
situation it might not produce this effect. 
Excessive size is a very common defect in 
the portrait-busts we occasionally place out- 
of-doors. A bust should be near the eye, 
for the sculptor has nothing but its ex- 
pressiveness to depend upon for the effect 
of his work; and, if it is made very big, 
it produces, unaccompanied by a body to 
justify its scale, not an heroic impression, 
but simply one of unnatural and disagreea- 
ble bulk. Not size in the bust itself, but 
elaboration in the pedestal should supply 
bulk where a quite small monument would 
be ineffective. The French appreciate this, 
and their architectural memorials, crowned 
by busts little if at all larger than life, are 
among their artists' happiest efibrts. 

216 



Out-Door Monuments 



Nor is it only when busts are to be placed 
that the architect may help in giving a mon- 
ument sufficient size. The circle where the 
Webster stands demands a large monument. 
An equestrian statue or a group might well 
have been placed there ; but a smaller stand- 
ing figure, on a lower but more spreading 
architectural base, would also have looked 
well. Where such a circle is formed, not 
by drives but by paths, a smaller monument 
would be more appropriate; and no such 
spot should be given its adornment without 
nice consideration of this question of scale (as 
concerned both with the extent of the spot 
and with the character of the objects around 
it), in full consciousness of the fact that a 
mistake will injure both the work of art as 
such and the general effect of the locality. 

Another important point is the height 
above the eye at which a statue stands. In 
city streets or squares this is determined sim- 
ply by the pedestal. But in parks there are 
often excellent situations well above the 
roads and walks. Statues placed here will 
be seen, not against a background of build- 
ings or fohage, but outlined against the sky ; 

217 



Art Out-of-Doors 



and none should be placed here which are 
not particularly strong and pleasing in sil- 
houette. The Bolivar in Central Park, on 
its little elevated plateau, proves that a bad 
statue will seem doubly bad when all its out- 
lines are thus conspicuously brought out; 
but, also, that this would be the best site in 
all the park for a really fine equestrian fig- 
ure. Not far away from the Webster statue 
there is a figure of a Falconer which, if not a 
remarkable, is a pleasing work of art ; and 
its effectiveness is certainly increased by its 
elevation on a rocky slope, although one 
wishes that this slope had been a little less 
rural in character, a little better adapted 
to the reception of so artificial an orna- 
ment. 

A good place for a group or figure which 
demands a certain elevation, is the top of a 
terrace or the balustrade of a bridge. The 
great stone bridges of many European towns 
bear wonderfully effective w^orks of sculpt- 
ure, but America has not yet begun to imi- 
tate them. On the low parapet of a httle 
park-bridge, busts and other works of mod- 
est size might be very beautifully used j and 
218 



Out-Door Monuments 



here, or along the balustrade of a terrace, 
we might fittingly commemorate many men 
hardly great enough to justify the erec- 
tion of more ambitious independent monu- 
ments. 

Again, it should be asked, Is the monu- 
ment to be seen from every side or from one 
or two sides only ? A figure or group not 
specially designed for a given spot is, of 
course, most successful when, as we walk 
around it, each step reveals new beauties of 
line and mass ; and great injustice is done 
to the artist and the public if such a work 
is set where only one aspect can be en- 
joyed. But, on the other hand, it is un- 
fair to artist and public if a work which 
has been designed to be seen from one side 
only is stationed so that the back is as con- 
spicuous as the front. We can imagine 
works which would be very unjustly treated 
if placed along the Mall in Central Park, 
for here their backs could be seen only by 
means of a forbidden walk on the grass ; 
but there are many others to which, for the 
same reason, a place like the Mall offers the 
kindest hospitality. In general, seated stat- 



219 



Art Out-of-Doors 



ues and busts are best fitted for such a place, 
as it is difficult to give their backs any 
strong quality of interest. 

This question of desirable points of view 
is even more suggestive than the question 
of scale as regards the main truth to 
which I have been leading up. This is the 
truth that, when a definite commission is 
given for a monument, the artist should be 
told just where it is to stand. He can 
then decide what must be its size, how 
strongly he must emphasize its silhouette, 
and whether he must consider all points of 
view with equal care or may subordinate 
some to the one v/hich will be of prima- 
ry importance. Such subordination, be it 
noted, even if it amounts to total sacrifice, 
is a perfectly lawful and laudable method 
of design when circumstances justify its 
choice. There is no more reason why the 
back of a monument should be as beautiful 
as the front, if the back will never be seen, 
than why a picture should be painted on 
both sides of the canvas. And the artist 
is shorn of his due prerogative when he is 

220 



Out-Door Monuments 



not allowed to choose whether he will sub- 
ordinate it or not. 

Of course works of sculpture, or of archi- 
tecture and sculpture combined, are just 
as appropriate for urban adornment when 
their value is simply artistic as when it is 
commemorative, historical. Indeed, there 
is a chance that beauty will be greater 
in such w^orks than in portrait-monuments, 
and so it is especially desirable, for the 
sake of the public's pleasure^ and the de- 
velopment of its taste, that they should 
be more generally placed in our streets and 
parks. When they are given to a city the 
question of site will almost ahvays arise af- 
ter the artist has finished his work. Then, 
if possible, he should be consulted with re- 
gard to its placing; and in any case this 
placing should be very carefully considered. 
Likewise, the pedestal should be as intelli- 
gently designed as that of a portrait-figure. 
For neither class of works is a plain base 
always the best ; and nothing less than the 
best should satisfy us in constructions of so 
permanent a sort. 

It would be well, too, if those v/ho give 



221 



Art Out-of -Doors 



non-commemorative works of art to our parks 
would intelligently consider what kinds are 
fitted for out-door erection. Broadly speak- 
ing, a statue or group looks best out-of-doors 
when it has a definite out-door character it- 
self. The Falconer of which I just spoke is, 
in idea, a most excellent out-door figure, 
and so is Mr. Ward's Indian Hunter ; but 
in another spot in Central Park there is a 
group called Auld Lang Syne, which seems 
to cry out for a roof above its head. No 
one would care to see, under the open sky, 
the figure of a mother rocking her baby to 
sleep ] but a peasant mother trudging home- 
ward from the field with her sleeping baby 
on her arm might be wholly satisfactory. 

The question of appropriate placing natu- 
rally includes the character as well as the 
size of a monument. As the Falconer stands, 
or even as the Indian Hunter stands, on the 
edge of a road under a spreading tree, no 
one should think of placing a portrait-figure. 
And in certain retired nooks in the rural 
portions of a park we can fancy little groups 
of animals or rustic children looking well, 
although a commemorative or a highly ideal- 



222 



Out-Door Monuments 



istic figure would be out of harmony with 
the expression of the spot. 

For obvious reasons it is less easy to give 
the right out-door look to a seated than to a 
standing figure of the commemorative sort ; 
but a seated figure looks better, I think, in 
those portions of a park where living people 
sit at rest, and the idea of repose is in 
the air, than in a city's rushing streets. 
Seward, poising his pen on the corner of 
Madison Square, seems sadly out of place, 
and many travellers must have noticed in 
London the almost comically inappropriate 
air of the sitting figure of George Peabody, 
surrounded by the City's crowds and clamor. 
Sometimes the architect might well be asked 
to furnish, not merely a base for a seated 
figure, but also some sort of a canopy or 
roof to mitigate the impression that it ought 
not to be out-of-doors. It would be inter- 
esting to know just how the Greeks and 
Romans dealt with this question of sitting 
figures ; it seems as though they must have 
preferred to place them under porches or 
colonnades rather than boldly beneath the 
sky. But in any case our climate is not the 



223 



Art Out-of. Doors 



climate of Greece, and a statue sitting plac- 
idly with its lap full of snow does not pro- 
duce a very fortunate effect. 

Finally, the treatment of the ground 
around the base of a monument should be 
given due attention. The equestrian statue 
of "Washington in the Public Garden at Bos- 
ton is excellently placed, near the boundary 
of the pleasure-ground at the intersection of 
its main paths. But when I saw it last it 
had a curiously inappropriate look owing to 
the mass of tall, exotic plants which encir- 
cled its base. The profusion of these plants 
obliterated the connection of the pedestal 
with the soil, without supplying any strong 
connecting lines of stem and branch which 
might seem to bind them together : and 
their freely waving lea^'cs were out of har- 
mony with the rigid architectural lines. If 
the pedestal had risen naked from the 
smoothly clipped turf it would have looked 
much better, but best of all if partly draped 
in a closely clinging vine, vrhich would not 
have disguised its form, yet, instead of sepa- 
rating it from the ground, would have con- 



Out-Door Monuments 



nected the two in more intimate fashion. 
Nothing is more beautiful than the way in 
which the French use ivy to drape the ped- 
estals of their open-air statues j and even 
when these stand, as I think they should 
not, in the centre of open lawns, the mis- 
take is partly condoned by the unifying 
creepers. So far as I remember, the French 
never surround a statue with a high growth 
of loose-leaved ornamental plants or a wide 
pattern-bed of flowers. 

The distinction betw^een right and wrong 
methods of treatment is, in this case, per- 
fectly clear. The creepers unite themselves 
with the monument and unite it with the 
ground, while the big foliage-plants or pat- 
tern-beds supply a third element which has 
no intimate relationship with either turf or 
stone. The good effect of vines on pedes- 
tals may be studied in a few places in this 
country also, as on the pedestal of the Web- 
ster in Central Park. One would like to 
see them planted around the statues on the 
Mall as well, and afterward carefully re- 
strained from undue luxuriance ; for the 
stone-work should be draped, not wholly 
225 



Art Oiit-of -Doors 



concealed and denied. For such a purpose 
the so-called Japanese ivy is an excellent 
plant. It looks as though nature had in- 
vented it to serve the architect's needs. 
English ivy is not so certain to prove hardy 
in our Northern States, and although the 
Japanese ivy loses its leaves in winter, even 
then its beautiful net-work of delicate 
branches seems to tie the stone on which it 
clings to the bosom of Mother Earth. 

Formally clipped plants, growing in sim- 
ple but handsome pots, are sometimes ap- 
propriate around a monument, especially if 
it is placed on a terrace; and in certain 
other cases a plantation of shrubs is de- 
sirable, though rather as forming a back- 
ground to the pedestal than as encircling it. 
The Farragut monument on Madison Square 
needs such a background, which, indeed, 
was planned for by the architect; and it 
will look much better when, from the rear, 
only the figure itself is visible. 

When we think of the variety of beauti- 
ful effects which might be produced in our 
parks by monuments carefully planned for 
226 



Out- Door Monuments 



special situations — as for niches in founda- 
tion-walls, for the crowning of balustrades 
and bridge - parapets, the adornment of 
drinking-fountains, the completion of 
potnts, and the flanking of formal avenues — 
most of the work already done seems very- 
monotonous and unimaginative. The chief 
trouble has been that we think too little 
of the question of site. When we order a 
statue we are too indifferent as to where it 
may go ; when we buy one already made 
we are too careless in its placing. If we 
have thought at all it has been simply with 
regard to the intrinsic excellence of the fig- 
ures. Now we should begin to consider 
our monuments in a broader way, as oppor- 
tunities for the architect as well as for the 
sculptor, and as features in general views the 
harmonious beauty of which should be jeal- 
ously preserved. 

227 



XI 

Cemeteries 



^'Our blessed Saviour chose the Garden for his 
Oratory, and dying, for the place of his Sepulchre ; 
and we do avouch for many weighty causes, that 
there are none more fit to bury our dead in than in 
our Gardens and Groves, where our Beds may be 
decked with verdant and fragrant flowers, Trees and 
Perennial Plants, the most natural and instructive 
Hieroglyphics of our expected Resurrection and Im- 
mortality." 

— John Evelyn. 



XI 



ANY foreign writers have praised 
our rural cemeteries without 
reserve. The student of social 
conditions says that they express 
genuine poetic feehng as well as wise sani- 
tary ideas, and the lover of art and Nature 
finds them our most characteristic achieve- 
ments in the art of gardening. Their size, 
their park -like arrangement, their remoteness 
from centres of population, and the neatness 
with which they are kept, have often been 
described as worthy of imitation in Euro- 
pean countries. 

Certainly, as contrasted with the walled- 
in, crowded, dreary, sun-baked, weed-grown 
cemeteries one most often finds in Europe, 
ours deserve great praise. But they are not 
what they ought to be. Excellent in in- 
tention, they are too often bad in execu- 
tion. No expenditure of money or pains is 
shunned, but grievous mistakes are made in 




Art Out-of-Doors 



determining how money and pains shall be 
bestowed. 

Irrespective of the size of the community 
which it must serve, a modern American 
cemetery is sure to be a rural cemetery. 
But we scarcely ever see one in which this 
fundamental idea has been consistently ex- 
pressed and then carefully preserved. Nat- 
ure is asked to take our dead in charge, and 
then we do a thousand things to ruin the re- 
pose, the sanctity and beauty which she is 
ready to provide. We cut too many roads 
and paths, giving the burial-ground the look 
of a pleasuring-place rather than the look of 
a place where the living go to visit the dead. 
We make ample allowance of space to each 
purchaser of land, partly that his graves 
may not be crowded and partly that they 
may not destroy the unity and quietness of 
the landscape; and then we nuUify our 
efforts by enclosing the lots with heavy 
railings, and by building huge and sho\vy 
monuments. We think we want a natural 
landscape, and then we plant the ceme- 
tery — not the private lots alone, but also the 

232 



Cemeteries 



parts which have been preserved intact for 
the sake of landscape-beauty — with tropical 
plants and beds of gaudy flowers, and with 
ribbon-patterns, borders, and endless puerile 
devices, wrought with bright-foliaged plants 
which support our climate for only a few 
w^eeks or months and then disappear, leaving 
dreary nakedness behind. In short, we lose 
sight of the main purpose with which the 
cemetery was designed, fail to keep any 
general idea or scheme in mind, and instead 
of a rural burial-ground produce something 
which is a meaningless, unnatural, and essen- 
tially vulgar compound of a cemetery, a 
park, a horticultural exhibition, and a col- 
lection of works of architecture and sculpt 
ure. 

And this we do by means of a vast 
waste of pains and money. No one who 
has not inquired into such matters can 
imagine what it costs to plant out, year by 
year, the exotics which are supposed to 
adorn our cemeteries, and to winter them 
from one summer to another. Few realize 
the degree to which cemetery companies 
now compete with one another in this direc- 



233 



Art Out-of-Doors 



tion, bidding for public patronage by means 
of costly horticultural establishments and 
verbose advertisements of their floral re- 
sources and achievements. All this is 
wrong — wrong from the point of viev/ of 
good sense, from the point of view of true 
sentiment, and from the point of view of 
art. 

The true ideal for the making of an 
American cemetery, whether large or small, 
is this : That spot should be selected which 
has the greatest natural charms in the direc- 
tion of peacefulness of effect and the harmony 
which means variety in unity. Its features 
should be as carefully preserved as possible 
in laying out the walks and drives, and 
these should not be more numerous than is 
actually required for purposes of burial and 
of visiting the graves. Such planting as is 
needful should be done in a way to com- 
plete the existing kind of beauty, and ac- 
centuate, not disturb, the natural character 
of the spot. No costly exotics or showy 
flower-beds, and no formal plantations of 
any kind, should be allowed : they are out 
of keeping alike with the kind of beauty 

234 



Cemeteries 



that is desired, and with the spirit in which 
a cemetery is properly visited. Owners 
of lots should not be permitted to surround 
them with railings : they are palpably use- 
less, they are glaringly hurtful to peace and 
unity of aspect, they serve merely to ac- 
centuate the fact of proprietorship, and 
nothing could be in worse taste than such 
accentuation in such a place. 

Furthermore, owners should be encouraged 
to make their monuments, not merely as ar- 
tistic, but also as simple and unobtrusive, as 
possible. Only a great man, one to whose 
grave strangers are likely to come as pil- 
grims, is entitled to a conspicuous tomb. 
Even he does not require it, and the usual 
tenant of a grave requires no more than a 
sign to show that a grave is here, and to tell 
whose grave it is. The best tombstone in 
a rural cemetery is the one which, in form 
and color, is least strikingly apparent. 
Therefore a flat slab is better than a vertical 
stone or shaft, and gray slate or granite is 
a good material, red granite is a poor ma- 
terial, and the very worst of all is our 
favorite white marble. But the ideal mon- 



235 



Art Out-of-Doors 



ument for a rural cemetery is^ I think, a 
natural rock or bowlder. Of course such a 
stone might be so set that, looking out of 
place, it would seem more artificial than a 
carven one — there is nothing so artificial as 
a patent affectation of simplicity. But very 
often one may be found set by Nature m a 
spot convenient for a grave, or may be so set 
by man as to have a perfectly natural look ; 
and then, with a space smoothed for the in- 
scription but the rest of its moss-grown or 
vine-wreathed surface left untouched, it is a 
simple, serious, dignified, and artistic monu- 
ment, worthy of the noblest dead. 

Too often a committee charged with the 
erection of a civic memorial thinks it can 
dispense with an artist's aid. Too often a 
group or figure or architectural design (espe- 
cially if it be for a Soldier's ^Monument) is 
ordered as a plain block of stone might be : 
— the commission for its material is given to 
a stone-yard or a quarry company, and the 

art " is thrown in, some nameless and art- 
less artisan in the company's employ being 
bidden to produce, often in the space of a 
236 



Cemeteries 



few weeks, such a thing as a great artist 
could not execute without many months of 
careful study. Gradually, however, we are 
coming to realize that this is not the way to 
secure monuments for public display. Grad- 
ually we are learning that the artist's part in 
them is quite as important as the stone-cut- 
ter's or the mason's. But just in the place 
where one might think good taste would 
most surely prevail, and no care or pains 
would be counted too great — ^just here we 
do even worse than with our pubHc monu- 
ments. In our cemeteries we still feel that 
we can dispense altogether with the artist's 
aid. When we commemorate our own be- 
loved dead we think less of true beauty in 
the result than when we buy a dress or fur- 
nish a drawing-room. The stone-yard stands 
close to the cemetery's gate ; and to the 
stone-yard we contentedly go when we want 
a slab or headstone, or even an emblematic 
figure or an elaborate architectural monu- 
ment. 

There is a chance for the exercise of true 
art in the designing of even the simplest 
head-stone ; and there is the certainty of a 

237 



Art Out-of-Doors 



hideous result when anything more compli- 
cated is designed without an artist's help. 
Tlie big. awkward tombs^ the tall, ungraceful 
shafts, the clumsy, meaningless, hideous fig- 
ures, and the commonplace, ill-proportioned 
head-stones which fill our cemeteries, would 
be exasperating if they were not so piciful. 
They are tributes of true affection, often 
costing, one cannot doubt, a great deal 
more than their givers could rightly afford 
to pay ; and thus, in their distressing failure 
to be either beautiful or expressive, they 
bring a tear to the eye rather than a word 
of scorn or anger to the lips. If, in thus 
telling other people that we loved our dead, 
we could consent to speak less loudly and 
more carefully, how beautiful, how touch- 
ing and impressive a cemetery might be ! 
The price now paid for a big monument, 
bad in design and worse in ornamentation, 
might persuade even a great artist to design 
a cross or head-stone which, in its simple 
way, would be an object of the utmost value. 
Such an object would really honor the mem- 
ory of our dead, instead of simply shouting 
out their names with a crude and vulgar 

238 



Cemeteries 



voice; and the association of many such 
would make our cemeteries really beautiful 
spots. Now they usually look like stone- 
cutter's yards on an extended scale. 

I know one rural cemetery near Boston 
where the trustees have taken this matter of 
monuments, as well as the matter of planting, 
into their own hands. A skilful architect 
has made for them a number of tombstone 
designs, some more elaborate than others, 
but all simple enough to be executed by an 
ordinary stone-cutter. Among these designs 
the lot-owner can choose ; and if he cares 
for none of them, he must submit his own 
for the trustees' sanction. Nor may he plant 
his lot as he pleases. All the planting is 
done under the trustees' supervision. There 
is none of a formal and none of a showy 
or expensive kind. AVild flowers are en- 
couraged to grow, native trees and shrubs 
are preserved wherever desirable, and hardy 
flowers have been planted w^here they could 
help the general efl'ect of the landscape. Of 
course no enclosures are permitted around 
the lots, and, while the grass is shorn in the 
occupied parts and all parts are kept appro- 

239 



Art Out-of-Doors 



priately neat, there is no excess of mere tidi- 
ness and trimness ; for a cemetery is not a 
park or a garden ; it is not a place for pleas- 
ure-seeking or an environment for the homes 
of men. It is the home of the dead ; it is 
God's Acre; it should prove a guardian's 
presence, but not a horticulturalist's enthu- 
siasm. 

Nature made this spot very beautiful with 
shady woods and with a varied surface, often 
distinctly picturesque and yet not too wild 
or broken to seem a true God's xAcre for the 
peaceful resting of the dead ; and the truest 
kind of art has done all that it could, first to 
preserve, and then to accentuate Nature's 
scheme. Richardson lies buried in this 
cemetery ; and if other artists could see how 
quiet and beautiful it is, how satisfying to 
both eye and mind, how far superior, from 
every point of view, to the usual burial- 
ground — which seems to have been given over 
to the running of a race in crude display be- 
tween gardener and stone-cutter — then, I 
think, all the artists in America might ask 
to lie near Richardson. 



240 



XII 

The Beauty of Trees 



" I should only observe with regard to trees that 
Nature has been kinder to them in point of variety 
than even to its living forms." 

—GUpin, 

" It has been the office of art to educate the per- 
ception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but 
our eyes have no clear vision.*' 

— Emerson. 



XII 



ROM the artistic point of view 
trees have three characteristics 
which may be separately studied 
— form, texture, and color. 

The first element in the form of a tree is 
its general outline, its contour, the silhouette 
it makes when relieved against the sky or 
against masses of trees of other colors. The 
outline peculiar to a given species varies a 
good deal, of course, in different individuals ; 
but in all full-grown and well-grown indi - 
viduals it vv^ill be so nearly the same that the 
typical shape of the species may often be 
expressed in a very simple diagram on paper. 
An isosceles triangle with a broad base, for 
instance, gives the typical outline of the 
spruce; a similar figure, but with swelling 
sides, gives that of a freely developed hem- 
lock ; the white elm would fill a vase-like 
figure supported by a straight line for the 

243 




Art Oui-of-Doors 



stem, the hickory an elongated oval, the 
sugar-maple a much fuller oval, the white 
birch a very long and slender oval, and the 
oak a figure approaching more nearly to a 
circle. In other cases the form of the head 
is more irregular, as with the silver-maple, 
for instance, the typical shape of which 
would be expressed by a diagram of broken 
outline. But even in such cases this shape 
may easily be imprinted upon the memory, 
and, once imprinted, the pleasure of looking 
upon a new specimen of the tree is greatly 
increased by one's knowledge of how nearly 
it coincides with the typical form of the 
species to which it belongs, or how far it 
departs from it. 

But a tree's general outline is by no means 
the only thing which determines its form. 
Its structure is of almost more importance 
than its outline, as this may be greatly af- 
fected by position, accident, or man's inter- 
ference, while, within very narrow limits, its 
structure must always be the same. Branches 
now droop stiffly like those of the spruce, 
and now gracefully like those of the elm, or 
they spread at right angles as in the cedar of 
244 



The Beauty of Trees 



Lebanon, or sharply ascend as in the Lom- 
bardy poplar j and between these extremes 
there are almost as many variations in 
branch-development as there are kinds of 
trees. Each variation gives a tree a dis- 
tinctive form, the peculiarities of which are 
increased by other facts of structure, such 
as the greater or smaller number of the 
branches, giving more or less density and 
uniformity of surface to the head. And 
each of these differences in form means a 
difference in the expression of a tree, de- 
termining the character of its beauty and 
therefore its appropriateness to a given situ- 
ation. A tree with a regular, formal outhne 
is beautiful in a way wholly unlike that of a 
tree with an irregular, broken outline ; and 
the sam.e is true when we contrast one that 
has many main branches dividing again into 
many minor ones, and therefore a dense, 
compact head, with one that has fewer 
branches and a more open and broken sur- 
face. 

The average size to which the trees of a 
given species are apt to grow is. of course, 
another element to be considered in studying 

245 



Art Out-of-Doors 



tree-forms. This is so obvious a charac- 
teristic that even the least artistic eye will 
note it, the most thoughtless planter will 
take it somewhat into account. But if we 
may judge by the results we find all around 
us in places where an intelligent landscape- 
gardener has not been employed, few persons 
pay any attention to other characteristics of 
form. j\Iere chance or, at most, a thought- 
less, abstract preference for some kind of 
tree, seems much more often to have regu- 
lated our planting than a clear realization of 
intrinsic characters, accompanied by reflec- 
tion with regard to the appropriateness of 
one character or another to a special spot. 
I have known an intending planter to ask 
for elms, and yet not know whether he want- 
ed American white elms which would grow 
up into vase-like, drooping forms, or English 
elms which would assume shapes almost 
identical with the shapes of oaks. If a sin- 
gle tree is wanted in a conspicuous position 
a sugar-maple is chosen, perhaps, because 
sugar-maples are known to be good trees," 
although it would be less well in place vrith 
its roundish head than a hickory with its 
246 



The Beauty of Trees 



taller, narrower shape, or a hemlock, sweeping 
the grass with its branches. It is the same 
when trees are set in masses; little thought 
is given to the way in which their forms will 
contrast one with the other, and a distressing 
confusion results where pendulous birches, 
spiry-topped spruces, round and solid horse- 
chestnuts, and straggling silver-maples work 
in concord only in the sense that each 
prevents the others from appearing well, 
and helps to deprive the plantation as a 
whole of unity, grace, and effective expres- 
sion. 

But even when facts of outline are borne 
in mind, facts of structure are constantly 
forgotten. Yet these are of particular im- 
portance when a tree is placed in isolation. 
Almost any kind of contour is agreeable in 
an isolated tree, but in certain situations it 
makes a vast difference whether the eye rests 
upon an almost unbroken surface, like that 
presented by the horse-chestnut until it has 
reached a great age, or upon a surface which 
an artist would call boldly and effectively 
modelled — a surface diversified by those al- 
ternations of light and shadow which give 

247 



Art Out-of. Doors 



variety of form within the limits of the 
general contour. 

By the texture of a tree I mean the 
character of its masses of foliage as deter- 
mined by the manner of growth of the 
lighter spray, and the number, shape, dis- 
position, and tissue of its leaves. We know 
what great differences in texture — in real or 
apparent solidity and in surface effect — may 
be produced, for example, by different 
methods of weaving silken threads, resulting 
now in silk, now in gauze, now in satin, 
and again in velvet. Nature produces simi- 
lar differences as she v/eaves the leafy cover- 
ings of her trees ; and they play as great 
a part in determining the effect of these 
trees as even varieties of form. 

If a spruce and a white pine were exactly 
the same in contour and in the disposition 
of their foliage into masses, the longer 
leaves of the pine, and their arrangement in 
clusters instead of in rows, vrould give it a 
wholly different effect because a wholly dif- 
ferent texture, Avhile the feathery spray and 
leafage of a hemlock would appear quite 

24S 



The Beauty of Trees 



distinct from either. Even two species of 
pine may be very unlike in texture, o^^•ing 
to diversities in the length, the rigidity, and 
the number of their needles. And with de- 
ciduous trees the case is the same. A great 
variety in texture is found even among spe- 
cies closely allied with one another and, 
when leafless, very similar in eftect. Leaves 
may be large or small, numerous or com- 
paratively few, clustered or scattered, held 
erect or horizontally or in a drooping man- 
ner ; they may have simple outlines, or be 
conspicuously cut or toothed or lobed, may 
be thick or thin, stiff or pliant in tissue, 
may be smooth or rough or shining of sur- 
face. A variation in any one characteris- 
tic greatly alters the general aspect of the 
foliage, and as there are so many character- 
istics which may be combined and recom- 
bined afresh, it is not strange that Nature's 
weaving processes should result in innumer- 
able kinds of texture. 

Upon these the expression of a tree de- 
pends quite as much as upon varieties of 
form or varieties of color, unless, indeed, 
color be so peculiar as to be no longer 
249 



Art Out-of -Doors 



green, or form so eccentric as to be hardly 

normal — as in the case of fasti giate or of 
weeping trees. A tree is sturdy-looking or 
graceful chiefly by reason of its form ; but 
such degrees of sturdiness as may be ex- 
pressed by the words severity, sombreness, 
majesty, picturesqueness, and such degrees 
of grace as are called fragility, weakness, 
delicacy, lightness — these spring in very 
large part from the texture of its foliage. 
Small leaves, and especially those which are 
small and elongated, or small and quivering, 
do more than a light color to give a tree a 
fragile aspect, a feminine kind of grace, 
while large and simple leaves almost of 
themselves imply a masculine air, and large, 
simple, and thick-textured leaves mean a 
certain majesty even in a plant so small that 
we call it a shrub. 

A small magnolia, for example, has more 
dignity than the biggest honey-locust. A 
catalpa is more masculine-looking than a 
willow of even the largest size ; and if we 
imagine the thin tissue of its leaves ex- 
changed for a thicker, stiffer tissue, we can 
easily see how its dignity would be still 
250 



The Beauty of Trees 



further increased. Even the difference in 
substance between the fohage of the Ameri- 
can and the European beech — the latter be- 
ing somewhat stiffer and much glossier — 
makes a difference in the expression of the 
two trees ; and there is a great contrast in 
expression, despite much similarity in form 
and structure, between the white oak with 
its large, round-lobed, dull-surfaced leaves, 
the scarlet oak with its deeply cut and 
glossy leaves, and the willow -oak with its 
very small, simply outlined and still glos- 
sier leaves. A uniform texture, caused by 
comparatively small leaves regularly and 
thickly distributed over the branches, gives 
a tree a quiet, restful look ; and a broken, 
spotted texture, caused by sparse, scattered, 
and conspicuously cut leaves (as in the but- 
ton-wood), gives it an unquiet look. 

All such facts, the commonplaces of the 
landscape-gardener, . should be noted and 
appraised by everyone who aspires to the 
title of a lover of trees. There are none 
richer in possibilities of pleasure to the cul- 
tivated eye, even if actual work in the way 
of planting is not in question ; for, while 

251 



Art Out-of-Doors 



forms vary much in trees and colors vary 
much, textures vary more j among the 
smaller woody plants individuaUty chiefly 
depends upon them ; and although their 
diversities may seem less striking than those 
of form and color to the careless observer, 
they soon grow to be equally conspicuous 
with the growth of the observing and appre- 
ciating faculties. 

And when planting is in question they 
are of very great importance. It is almost 
as bad to group trees inharmoniously with 
regard to their textures as with regard to 
their forms. Any artist would know that 
trees which are quiet and restful in effect 
may be used in larger masses, and will less 
conspicuously affect the appearance of their 
neighbors, than those which are spotted 
and restless of aspect. He would know, too, 
that it is better to relieve a light and feath- 
ery tree against a group of more solid foliage 
than to reverse the terms of the combina- 
tion. He would know that the massive, 
uniform surfaces which make a good back- 
ground are less pleasing in an isolated speci- 
men standing near the eye. He would 

252 



The Beauty of Trees 



know that the great, glossy, leathery leaves 
of the evergreen magnolia are just what is 
wanted in one spot, just what is not wanted 
in another, and that, while the trembling 
leaves of the aspen and the drooping, fringe- 
like texture of the cut-leaved birch unfit them 
for many positions, they make them especial- 
ly valuable for others. He would know that 
with every change of position and environ- 
ment comes a change in the effect of the 
texture of a tree, one sort looking best in 
full sunhght, another in a shadowed spot, 
or overhanging a stream, or set close against 
the walls of a house. An artist feels all this 
in advance if his profession be landscape- 
gardening j and he feels it at least in intelli- 
gent appreciation of existing results if it be 
some other branch of art, for it is every ar- 
tist's habit to appraise all that he sees for the 
three properties of form, texture, and color. 
But how few amateur planters feel it in ad- 
vance ; how few lovers of trees judge their 
own or their neighbors' places with such 
tests in mind ! Even when questions of 
form and of color are somewhat regarded, 
questions of texture very seldom are. Yet 

253 



Art Out-of-Doors 



a cultivated eye is as much distressed by 
seeing a rigid-looking spruce or a solid sugar- 
maple where a feathery hemlock or a deli- 
cate honey-locust might better stand, as by 
seeing a purple beech where harmony calls 
for a green one, or a lofty hickory where 
good composition demands a low and 
spreading dogwood. 

Among the varieties which Nature creates 
when clothing her trees in her usual livery 
of green, an artist would distinguish varie- 
eties of tint and varieties of tone or " value." 
The green of foliage may be of a bluish, or 
a yellowish, or a grayish tint, and, keeping 
this tint, it may vary from a very pale to a 
very dark tone. Again, the effect of a tree 
may be compounded of the different colors 
shown by the different sides of its leaves- 
may be a mottled and not a simple tone ; 
and it is always affected by the character of 
the surface of the leaves, a smooth and shin- 
ing tissue giving a tone quite unlike that 
produced by a dull or a woolly tissue, even 
though upon examination the same shade of 
coloring matter be discovered. And then, 

254 



The Beauty of Trees 



when her greens are exhausted, Nature falls 
back upon other colors, and gives us such an 
eccentric thing as, for instance, the purple 
beech. 

In default of a marked natural gift, it is 
more difficult, perhaps, to cultivate a good 
eye for color than for form ; yet it can be 
largely developed by a process of constant 
observation and comparison. The main 
trouble is that few people even try to appre- 
ciate the difference between coloristic har- 
monies and discords. They do not really 
look at anything they see. 

As it is with texture, so it is with color in 
trees : restfulness, which implies dignity, of 
effect, is more often desirable than restless- 
ness and fragile grace, and is always desir- 
able when a large mass is in question ; and 
it may broadly be said that dark colors are 
quieter than pale colors, and that the most 
restless of all are those which are mottled 
instead of simple. The unquiet look of a 
silver-maple, for instance, as compared with 
the restful look of a sugar -maple, depends as 
much upon the contrasted colors of the up- 
per and lower sides of its leaves as upon 



Art Out-of-Door$ 



their more sharply cut shapes and the more 
stragghng form of the tree itself The silver- 
maple is the better tree to supply a lively 
accent vrhere this is wanted : but the other 
is preferable for use in large masses, or as a 
single specimen where a strong yet quiet 
note will be the right one. 

The most effective combinations of color, 
when they are rightly made, are those which 
mean contrast rather than simple concord. 
But it is usually better, and it is ahvays 
safer, to place two tones of the same tint to- 
gether — as a dark and a hghter bluish green 
— rather than to associate two alien tints — 
as a bluish with a yellowish green. Grayish 
greens are the best when something is needed 
to harmonize other strongly contrasting 
tints. Everyone knows this who has studied 
the v^'ork of landscape-i:ainters : and we may 
sometimes see the fact illustrated toward 
evening, when a plantation which has been 
inharmonious in color under a bright light 
becomes harmonious simply by the fading of 
one or two of its tints into grayish twilight 
hues. 

Of course, when a tree is not green at all — 

2-5 



The Beauty of Trees 



when it is purple Hke the well-known variety 
of beech, or red like some Japanese maples, 
or blue like a Colorado spruce, or bright 
yellow like many varieties of shrubs — it 
should be used with peculiar care, and a dis- 
cretion amounting to the most rigid parsi- 
mony. It is like the red cloak which land- 
scape-painters are so fond of employing — 
invaluable, sometimes, if set in exactly the 
right place, but by no means always need- 
ful, and always ruinous if wrongly placed or 
over-emphasized . 

Again, all objects which come into visual 
contact with our trees must be considered 
as affecting their own colors. A tree which 
would look well against a background of 
dark rock might not look as well lifted 
against a background of sky ; and one 
which would harmonize with a brown or a 
white house might not harmonize with a 
red brick house. The sheen and color of 
water, too, and its reflecting powers, de- 
mand that its borders be very carefully 
treated. A bright tree which might give a 
welcome accent in itself might give a dis- 
tinctly over-emphatic accent if doubled by 

257 



Art Out-of-Doors 



reflection in a sheet of water; and, in gen- 
eral, moderately dark or grayish or whitish 
trees best sustain this reflection. AVe ai"e 
right for once, in our fashion of placing wil- 
lows near water ; not only their feathery 
texture but their tender and often neutral 
colors flt them vrell for such situations. If 
we imagine a large white willow changed 
to a vivid yellow-green, like that of the box- 
elder, we feel at once that its fitness for the 
neighborhood of water would be seriously im- 
paired. Of course, in the autumn the case is 
dinerent ; then all tones are changed for more 
vivid ones ; brightness is the characteristic 
quality of the landscape, and the brighter 
the reflected note, the better it often appears. 

The color of foliage is more or less aftected 
by its texture. Given leaves of a certain 
tint of green, the tree will seem darker if its 
head is massive and dense than if it is feath- 
ery and infiltrated with light. And it is. of 
course, the general color-efiect. and not the 
color of a leaf separately considered, which 
concerns the student of Nature's beauties 
and of the planter's tasks. 

It should also be remembered that the 

253 



The Beauty of Trees 



color of its foliage is not the only thing 
which determines the color of a tree. Its 
trunk and branches are often very apparent 
and are sometimes very striking in color. 
The foliage of the canoe-birch would not, of 
itself, make it a very conspicuous tree, but 
the contrast between its dark glossy leaves 
with their paler under sides and its pure 
white bark makes it so very striking that it 
is difficult to place it harmoniously. The 
lighter hue of the foliage of the gray birch 
is also accentuated by the whitish gray of its 
bark, as the mottled appearance given the 
button-wood by the shape and disposition 
of its leaves is accentuated by the mottled 
color of its splitting and peeling bark. 
There is no end to the varieties of combina- 
tion thus presented for the planter's use ] and, 
although each one renders his task more 
complicated and difficult, each affords him 
a new chance for some specially beautiful 
effect, if he can learn how to use it rightly. 

Form, texture, and color — these, then, 
are the three qualities to be considered when 
trees are studied for their artistic value. 



259 



Art Out-of-Doors 



If, in ornamental planting, we used only 
the materials which Nature supplies in the 
neighborhood of our homes, no one of these 
qualities would seem of more interest to the 
planter than the others, or would offer him 
more chances of making mistakes. But the 
efforts of generations in introducing exotic 
species of trees and in perpetuating casual 
natural eccentricities have brought color 
into greater relative prominence in the 
nursery than it assumes in Nature's work- 
shop. The planter is therefore more apt to 
be struck by varieties of color than by those 
of form and texture ; and, as a rule, he 
thinks more of the effects which he can pro- 
duce with them, and commits with them his 
most frequent and conspicuous errors. 

If a true artist could always be employed 
when a work of landscape-gardening is in 
question, then the development of our nu- 
merous and striking nursery-varieties of color 
— which include tones of purple, red, blue, 
white, and especially yellow in a score of 
different degrees, and many striped and mot- 
tled effects as well — might be counted wholly 
fortunate ; for, of course, the wider the range 
260 



The Beauty of Trees 



of an artist's palette, the more numerous will 
be the kinds of beauty which he may produce. 
But color is the most difficult of qualities to 
manage, the most revengeful when managed 
wrongly ; and under the hand of ordinary 
planters the varied material of to-day means 
merely a greater confusion of tints, a more 
painful degree of unrest, spottiness, and ugli- 
ness, than would have been achieved had 
materials from the neighboring woods been 
alone attainable. 

Too often, especially in small grounds, 
it seems as though the aim had been to 
do away as far as possible with medium 
green tones, and to set upon a carpet of 
vivid emerald turf as many trees of strong 
eccentric hue as could be collected. Even 
when the general tone of the landscape is 
pretty well preserved, and bright or varie- 
gated trees and shrubs are used simply as 
accents here and there, too little thought is 
given to placing them where they will be 
emphatic yet not disturbing, and too little 
to the question of their beauty as distinct 
from their mere novelty or eccentricity. 

As a rule, it is better to avoid striking col- 
261 



Art Out-of -Doors 



ors altogether, and keep to the quiet medium 
tones of green. These offer variety enough 
to satisfy a cultivated eye in the majority of 
cases ; and even if an emphatic note is really 
needed; it can be supplied, where the gen- 
eral effect is softly harmonious, by means of 
something less brilliant than a golden pop- 
lar or a purple beech. For the amateur, in 
short, the safest course is the best one to 
follow, although it may not be the one which 
an artist will always follow in his search for 
the highest and most individual kinds of 
beauty. If a dull tree stands where a bright 
one would have produced a better effect, we 
may feel that a chance has been missed. But 
if a bright one stands where harmony re- 
quired a dull one, then we feel that an actual 
sin against good taste has been committed. 

The art of the gardener has likewise greatly 
increased variety in the forms and in the text- 
ures of trees, giving us pyramidal and weep- 
ing shapes, and finely cut or fringed foliage, 
in a perpetually increasing flood of ^^novel- 
ties." Here again the amateur is apt to be 
seduced into thinking that novelty means 
excellence, that eccentricity means charm. ; 
262 



The Beauty of Trees 



he is apt to plant what he selects without re- 
gard to harmony of general effect, and to 
select in the interests of curiosity rather than 
of genuine beauty. And here again it may 
be said that the safest course is the wisest 
one to follow. Normal shapes can hardly 
be so distressing, however they may be com- 
bined, as abnormal ones are sure to be if 
there is the slightest error in their combina- 
tion. 

No tree is well understood until it is under- 
stood in all the stages of its growth. The 
typical shape of a young tree often differs 
very greatly from the typical shape of the 
same tree at maturity, and this again from 
its typical shape in old age ; and, in plant- 
ing, regard must be paid to the question 
whether an immediate effect or a long-post- 
poned effect ought most to be considered. 
A tree set in isolation on a lawn, in full 
view of the house, ought to be beautiful in 
youth and at the same time give promise of 
beauty (perhaps of a different kind, but 
still appropriate) in later years ; whereas in 
planting a belt of wood in the distance, 
263 



Art Out-of-Doors 



the principal trees should be so chosen that 
they will look better and better the older 
they grow, while present effect may be chiefly 
considered in others which are destined to 
be cut as development progresses. 

Texture changes less with the passage of 
years than form. Color is practically per- 
sistent year after year, but alters from month 
to month ; and this fact should also be borne 
in mind. There are some trees, like the 
yellow-wood, which are of a medium tint 
in the middle of summer, but of a yellowish 
green in spring, and it is unv\-ise to place 
them where during a few weeks they will not 
look well, even if later on they assume a har- 
monious hue. And our brilliant autumnal 
effects should also be more carefully consid- 
ered than they are to-day. 

The knowledge we need to gain, if we are 
to make the best of our opportunities for 
planting, is not a mere knowledge of the 
various forms and colors and textures that 
we may And in trees — it is a knowledge of 
trees themselves. Each species, each vari- 
ety, presents itself to us as a whole made up 
264 



The Beauty of Trees 



of three blended elements, and it is the 
whole, as such, with which we should strive 
to familiarize ourselves. We must learn, not 
which tints or shapes in the abstract harmo- 
nize with others, but which actual trees are 
harmonious in association. We must learn 
how each one looks in all the stages of its 
growth, at various seasons of the year, and 
under differing conditions of light and shade, 
of nearness and remoteness. If a certain 
tree seems out of place, we must be able to 
say, not merely why we think so, but what 
other tree might better have been chosen. 
And when a spot is to be planted we must 
be able to picture to ourselves how^ it should 
be filled, not in vague harmonies of abstract 
hues and shapes, but in definite mental por- 
traits of available trees. 

Too often a much lower degree of knowl- 
edge than this is thought all-sufficient. Too 
often it is supposed that, when one can rec- 
ognize the trees he most commonly meets 
and call them by name, he really knows 
them. But he does not unless he can see 
them, so to speak, when he does not see 
them — unless he can remember and ap- 
265 



Art Out-of-Doors 



predate all their special qualities. We can 
all recognize our friends when we meet 
them ; but something more than this power 
is needed by the painter when he wants to 
compose a picture of many figures, or to 
draw a face which shall have a given expres- 
sion ; and something more by the connois- 
seur if he is properly to estimate and thor- 
oughly to enjoy the artist's work. And as 
the painter and the connoisseur study and 
assimilate all they see, so too should the 
landscape-gardener and, no less, the lover 
of Nature, if they want to understand and 
enjoy all that is offered them, either in the 
unassisted work of Nature or in that which 
Nature and the artist have produced in 
partnership. Taste is the guide we need, 
and taste means the cultivation of our own 
perceptive powers, not the learning of cut- 
and-dried aesthetic formulas. 

To study art as a preparation for the study 
and appreciation of Nature may seem, at 
first thought, a reversal of the right order of 
things. But it is a very wise thing to do. 
If a painter were never anything more 
266 



The Beauty of Trees 



than a mere recorder of natural facts, a 
mere reporter in prosaic speech of things 
actually seen in this spot or that, his results 
would still be of service, enlarging our field 
of observation by the addition of his field, 
and preserving for constant examination ef- 
fects which are transitory in Nature. But 
a true painter is much more than this. He 
has at his command the power to preserve 
general truth of effect and yet accen- 
tuate certain special truths more forcibly 
than, to our eyes. Nature has presented 
them. This power of interpretation in one 
artist's work makes some one given thing 
more plain than Nature made it; in another 
artist's it makes another thing more plain, 
and in the combined work of all it makes 
Nature as a whole more plain, more vivid, 
more impressive. No matter how carefully 
and patiently we may study Nature in herself, 
we do not appreciate her to the full until we 
know what the great painters of the world 
have seen in her — how her forms, her text- 
ures, her colors have appeared to eyes, tastes, 
and feelings which by birth are clearer and 
keener than those of the average man, and 
267 



Art Out-of-Doors 



by incessant training have been developed 
to a still higher degree of power. 

In the study of form especially, a famil- 
iarity with landscape-painting is of infinite 
value. The color-scheme of Nature never 
remains for an hour the same and, whatever 
phase of it may be chosen, must be trans- 
posed, transmuted, before it can be put upon 
canvas. Therefore we must go to Nature to 
learn all that beautiful color may mean. 
But forms are less variable and can be more 
faithfully painted ; and the easiest way to 
cultivate a true appreciation of them is to 
study good landscape-pictures. A painter 
who has poetic power may help us very 
much by idealizing the suggestions and 
rough - draughts of Nature, and expressing 
her conceptions more perfectly than, in this 
warring world, she is often able to express 
them. Colors as beautiful as those we see 
every day in Nature we seldom see approached 
in paint ; but forms and compositions more 
perfect than those we are apt to find alive 
we constantly find on canvas. 

This is true even of the pictures of to- 
day, although to-day composition is less 
268 



The Beauty of Trees 



highly valued than any other element in 
landscape-painting ; but it is more con- 
spicuously true of the pictures of elder gen- 
erations. The great classic masters of land- 
scape — Claude, for instance, and Poussin 
and Ruysdael, and also the great modern 
master Corot, — give admirable lessons to 
the student of beautiful forms ; and, fortu- 
nately, their works can be as profitably con- 
sulted by him in engraved reproductions 
as on the actual canvas. Of course, they 
should not be consulted as text-books but 
as stimulants and explanations, as cultivators 
of taste, as teachers of what is meant by 
beautiful associations, by strong or graceful 
contours, by effective or subtile contrasts 
of light and shadow, by satisfactory con- 
trasts of textures — by variety in unity, by 
diversity in harmony, by dignity, breadth, 
simplicity, repose, and charm. These are 
the things they teach, not just what or how 
to plant in any possible given case ; but 
these are the things we must learn in advance 
of any planting, if we are to make a work of 
art of our result. 



269 



XIII 



" There is, I conceive, scarcely any tree that may 
not be advantageously used in the various combina- 
tions of form and color." 

— Gilpin. 



XIII 



NOWLEDGE and good taste 
must help in the grouping of 
trees, whatever they are and 
wherever they stand, if the re- 
sult is to be artistically good. But, of 
course, the more peculiar a tree is in form 
or color, the more unlike the trees which 
chiefly compose the picture in which it is to 
stand, the more carefully should the laws of 
harmony, of simplicity, of proper emphasis 
and agreeable contrast be consulted on its 
behalf, or, rather, on behalf of the picture 
as a whole. 

Four trees with which we are very famil- 
iar are conspicuously peculiar : the Lom- 
bardy poplar, the weeping willow, the purple 
or copper beech, and the white birch. 

No tree is more useful in the right place 
or more ugly in the wrong place than 
the Lombardy poplar. One of Nature's 

273 




Art Out-of -Doors 



^'sports/' never reproducing itself from 
seed, but easy of reproduction by the gar- 
dener, it is now an old friend of the people 
of every European land. In America we 
do not see it so often, although our fathers 
dearly loved to plant it. It has suffered 
much from disease in recent years, and, 
moreover, the canons of such gardening 
taste as we possess say that its formality 
is inappropriate in naturalistic landscape- 
scenes. 

Standing alone in the centre of a natu- 
ralistic landscape, this tall, narrow, and rigid 
tree does indeed look out of place, and al- 
most as sadly out of place if carelessly in- 
troduced among groups of other trees. Its 
qualities are distinctly architectonic; but 
when we recognize this it is not hard to im- 
agine good stations for it. 

In a narrow city street, for instance, 
where much shade is not wanted, it would 
look extremely well, for its character would 
be supported and explained by the archi- 
tectural lines around it. And, on the other 
hand, it is the best of all trees in country 
districts where there are no architectural 



274 



Four Trees 



lines at all, and no vertical natural lines, 
and where, in consequence, it can absolutely 
dominate the landscape. I know that many 
travellers object to its constant recurrence 
along the rural highways in the flat parts of 
France and Belgium ; but can they name a 
tree which might profitably take its place ? 
More shade than it gives would doubtless 
be welcome to those who travel these high- 
ways a - foot ; but as an element in the 
beauty of the general prospect it is emi- 
nently right. Lower, rounder trees would 
have much less dignity if miles of them were 
seen at once, and they would not so finely 
accentuate the qualities in which the charm 
of flat landscapes resides. The tall, stiff 
rows of poplars draw the eye forcibly to the 
horizon, and thus explain its inimitable dis- 
tance and the broad, quiet, generous spa- 
ciousness of the land which it encloses. If 
these highways were winding instead of 
straight, then poplars would be much less 
effective ; and in abrupt, rocky regions they 
lose their personal importance while adding 
little to the general charm of a scene. 

In our own parks, pleasure-grounds, and 

275 



Art Out-of-Doors 



gardens, they should Hkewise be used where 
accentuation is wanted ; and this means, of 
course, but sparingly and in carefully 
chosen spots. No one should set a Lom- 
bardy poplar by itself on an open lawn, as he 
might set a maple or a beech ; or plant it 
in groups, five or six Lombardies all by 
themselves ; or use it as an avenue-tree in a 
naturalistic scheme j or sprinkle it about at 
random in a thick plantation, a dozen Lom- 
bardies to send their peaks up here and 
there, inconsequently, above the graceful 
sky-line of their tuftier neighbors. But one 
or two Lombardy poplars, carefully set in a 
thick plantation just where their spires are 
needed to relieve its general softness and to 
break the sky-line with a touch of asperity 
and decision — these may be as effective, as 
beautiful, as one or two real spires spring- 
ing up through a mass of village trees. On 
the border of the lake in Central Park, 
near its western end, there are two or three 
old poplars standing on a little promontory ; 
and it is a great pity that they are old, for 
each new point of view newly impresses us 
with their inestimable value on just this spot. 
276 



Four Trees 



But perhaps the best place of all for a 
Lombardy poplar is beside a cottage, where 
its lines contrast with the lowness of the 
architectural lines yet are excused by them 
and give them increased dignity as well as 
charm. I have often seen it thus by a Eu- 
ropean cottage which was enchantingly pict- 
uresque but, without its poplar, would have 
been commonplace and tame. The Lom- 
bardy 's value, I say, is the value of a pro- 
nounced accent ; and everyone knows that 
accentuation of any sort should have a good 
reason to excuse it, and - should not be often 
repeated. Monotony itself is better, in the 
long run, than an exclamatory style. 

Wholly different in character is the weep- 
ing willow, but even more difficult to use 
really well. Its excessive pliancy, its mourn- 
ful, disconsolate expression, make it as con- 
spicuous as the tallest poplar to eyes w^hich 
can note the forms of trees even when they 
are not relieved against the sky. As soon 
as we see a weeping willow it almost shouts 
out its contrast to the simpler shapes of the 
trees which determine the general character 



277 



Art Out-of-Doors 



of all our landscapes or garden-pictures. 
Vet we see it everywhere, in every kind of 
situation. 

It grows easily and very quickly, it is not 
nice with regard to soils or sites, and it puts 
forth its leaves very early in the spring. 
These facts recommend it, and some people 
find it beautiful, while more believe that it 
is poetic." It is planted perpetually; 
but it seldom looks even reasonably well, 
and it is hard to say where it ought to 
look best. I confess, indeed, that I don't 
care about it at all myself. I can see that 
it has a certain individual charm, and am 
ready to agree that, rightly placed, this 
charm might increase the beauty of a land- 
scape-picture. But in all my wanderings I 
never once have seen it rightly placed ; I 
never once have seen it where it did not 
hurt the effect of its surroundings, or, at 
least, if it stood apart from other trees, 
where some tree of a different species would 
not have looked far better. Our gardens 
owe much to the Chinese, but they have 
done a good deal to offset their claims up- 
on our gratitude by sending us the weep- 
278 



Four Trees 



ing willow. If it came by the way of the 
rivers of Babylon, that may excuse its pres- 
ence in a garden which is planned as a 
symbolic exposition of sentiment, but not 
in one which is planned as a work of art. 

I have, indeed, seen one or two Japanese 
pictures where a weeping willow looked 
very well. There it overhung a cascade; 
and it looked well because the falHng lines 
of water harmonized with its own lines — 
because, so to say, the cascade excused its 
abnormal shape. If you have a little cas- 
cade, then, plant a little weeping willow ; 
or if you have a big waterfall, encourage a 
weeping willow to grow big beside it ; but 
do not allow one to shed its tears in the 
centre of your lawn, or to mingle its weak 
pendulousness with the sturdier, more normal 
forms of the trees in your foreground group 
or your forest-like plantation. It can never 
form an accent, like the Lombardy poplar ; 
it can only form a contrast and, almost in- 
variably, an inharmonious one. It is out 
of all relation with soft round-headed trees, 
and still more with angularly spreading or 
aspiring trees. 



279 



Art Out-of-Doors 



Some pendulous trees do form accents, 
but they are of sturdier habit than the 
weeping willow. There is a garden variety 
of beech, for instance, which we call the 
weeping beech ; but it does not lament in 
as weak and watery a way as the willow. 
It would look very much out of place in a 
landscape-picture of an extremely natural- 
istic type ; but where the desired effect is 
what old English gardeners used to call 

polished" — where it is a distinctly gar- 
denesque effect — then a weeping beech may 
look well; and best of all where it stands 
in a palpably artificial scene yet is sup- 
ported by great neighboring masses of rock. 
I should be sorry to see the fine weeping 
beeches removed from the West Drive in 
Central Park, but I should be still more 
sorry to see them turned into weeping 
willows. 

In a rural spot, a cottage with a weeping 
willow beside it looks better than a naked 
cottage ; but another tree would still more 
clearly express, by its greater sturdiness, the 
idea of comfortable protection. But the 
very worst place of all for a weeping willow, 
280 



Four Trees 



worse even than the centre of a lawn, is the 
very place where we most often find it — be- 
side a placid sheet of water. The beauty 
of a little sheet of water is the beauty of re- 
pose, of simplicity, of breath, of horizontal 
lines ; with all of these qualities the droop- 
ing lines of the weeping willow conflict, for 
they are almost as restless, in the artistic 
sense, as is the color of pattern-beds of flow- 
ers. Truly, a w^illow may look vrell by a 
pond — better, perhaps, in some places, than 
any other tree ; but not a weeping willow. 
All the good points about this tree — the deli- 
cate character of its spray, the tender, pallid 
color of its leaves, and their twinkling, airy 
grace — are found in greater perfection in its 
fine cousin, the white willoAv, and in many 
of its other cousins, too. The vrhite vrillow, 
which is also a foreigner but grows content- 
edly with us and has actually run wild in 
our northern woods, is even more individual 
in color and texture than the lachrymose 
one ; it is likewise graceful, but with a much 
more manly and normal kind of grace ; and 
it has all the virtues that its relative lacks — 
dignity, simplicity, and a general effect which 

23l 



Art Out-of-Doors 



harmonizes while it contrasts with the tree- 
forms which are hkely to occur around it. 
Where this tree can be used there is no ex- 
cuse for a weeping willow ; and where it 
cannot, then very certainly a weeping willow 
is not wanted. 

The purple beech is normal in shape and 
normal in texture, but its abnormal color 
puts it on the list of eccentric^ and therefore 
dangerous, trees. Rightly used, it may very 
beautifully assist the effect of a garden-pict- 
ure ; wrongly used, it may ruin it entirely. 

It should never figure in a distinctly rural 
picture ; and, in a gardenesque picture it 
should never look as though accident had 
determined its place, for everyone knows 
that it is not a natural species, but a chance 
variety, artificially propagated. It should 
never be planted in or near a wood, on a 
rough hill-side, in a picturesque glen or hol- 
low. Its place is in definitely ornamental, 
well-tended, polished" grounds, near a 
house, or in the more civilized parts of a 
public pleasure-ground. Here it may stand 
in isolation and be lovely to look upon, 



Four Trees 



especially if its tone tends toward golden 
brown — if it is a copper rather than a truly 
purple beech. Indeed, it looks better in 
isolation than in any possible group. It is 
evidently a specimen" tree, valued be- 
cause of its peculiarities ; and besides, when 
freely developed, it is very symmetrical, 
and where color is abnormal one wants no 
irregularities of form. 

If a purple beech cannot stand alone, and 
yet must be planted, its associates should be 
very carefully chosen. Of course, the best 
will be its own relatives, the green beeches 
— either the English form with its dark 
green, glossy foliage, or the American with 
its lighter foliage, paler bark, and more 
graceful ramihcations. Faihng these, it 
groups most agreeably with trees which re- 
peat its own lines in a general way, as with 
the scarlet maple, or with those which form 
gentle contrasts, like the elliptical sugar- 
maple. Its effect would be entirely spoiled 
by near neighborhood with the broken, pict- 
uresque outline of a white pine, or the hard, 
conical shape of a spruce. Again, all trees 
which accord well with it in form may not 
283 



Art Out-of-Doors 



suit it in color. Here once more we want 
no sharp contrasts ; the tree itseh'' is in sharp 
contrast with the general effect of the scene ; 
the planter's care should be to mitigate 
rather than reinforce its emphasis. 

Once, in New England, I saw in a fine 
old country - place an avenue of purple 
beeches. They were the pride of the place, 
but the pride was a false one. How could 
a long double line of purple trees fail to 
disturb the restfulness and harmony which 
should characterize every landscape-picture ? 
Anything that is eccentric, in form or in 
color, should, I say again, be very sparingly 
as well as very carefully used. One purple 
beech may beautifully enliven a garden ; two 
or three, no matter how set and surrounded, 
are pretty sure to hurt even a landscape 
of considerable extent. And as it is with 
this purple tree, so it is of course with the 
thousand and one purple and yellow and 
striped and spotted trees and shrubs of which 
v/e are so foolishly fond. A very few of 
them may increase general beauty of effect, 
but even this is by no means certain ; many 
of them are sure to be harmful ; and their 



Four Trees 



intrinsic beauty is certainly not so great 
that general beauty should for its sake be 
sacrificed. In a beautiful place we shall not 
find any avenue of purple beeches, any great 
bed of yellow shrubs, or any speckling and 
spotting of such shrubs among the green 
ones, no more than we shall find a big ex- 
panse of coleus taking the place of an emer- 
ald lawn. Green is Nature's livery, and I am 
borrowing an old English v/riter's phrase 
when I say that it is easy to put too many 
gaudy stripes and bright buttons upon this 
livery. 

And now for our fourth tree — the little 
white birch, or gray birch, which we love 
so well in its native v/oods and plant so often 
in our home-grounds ; or, if not this tree 
precisely, then the European cousin which 
closely resembles it. 

This birch is not exactly an eccentric tree, 
but it is a pecuhar tree, a very decided 
little tree, with a character all its own. 
None, perhaps, has given our landscape- 
gardeners more trouble. Everyone knows 
it, everyone hkes it and wants it, andevery- 
285 



Art Out-of-Doors 



one can point to places where the general 
effect would be decidely poorer without it. 
Therefore the artist is more often told, and 
the amateur is more often tempted, to plant 
a birch than any other conspicuous tree; and 
as a result it spoils as often as it helps our 
garden-pictures. It is not a weak tree in the 
injurious sense that we give the term when 
we use it of the weeping willow ] but it is 
a very delicate and phant, graceful and 
feminine tree — the lady of the woods," as 
a poet called it long ago; and its shining 
trunk and twinkling leaves make it very 
restless. It is too nerveless in build and too 
undecided in outline to look well standing 
alone, and it is too vivacious to look well 
against a background composed, for instance, 
of sugar-maples or beeches. Its place is just 
the place in which a gardener's tree, like 
the purple beech, ought never to stand. It 
should be planted as nearly as possible in 
the way that Nature plants it. It belongs 
on the edge of a mingled growth of trees 
and shrubs forming a natural-looking wood, 
in a rocky glen, or on a roughish slope. 
Among the wild pines and hemlocks, tupe- 
286 



Four Trees 



los and oaks of eastern New England it is 
beautifully effective ; and, when a tree is 
profusely used by Nature in our neighbor- 
hoods, Nature should be our guide if we 
want to use it in our pleasure-grounds. 

The canoe-birch is not so fragile and 
graceful and feminine as its small gray cousin; 
but its pure white trunk, contrasting w^ith 
its dark green leaves, make it even more con- 
spicuous. Where the gray birch may stand, 
it also may often stand; and a fine specimen 
sometimes looks well in isolation too. 
287 



XIV 

A Word for the Axe 



" As Paradise (though of God's own Planting) was 
no longer Paradise than the Man was put into it, to 
dress it and to keep it, so nor will our Gardens . . 
. . remain long in their perfection unless they are 
also continually cultivated." 

— yohn Evelyn. 

" A garden must be looked unto and dressed, as 
the body." 

— George Herbert. 



XIV 



S it true that those who make a 
nation's songs influence it more 
than those who make its laws ? 
I am tempted to think so when- 
ever I hear a Hne of " Woodman, spare that 
tree;" and also to think that songs, like 
other forces, may work most vigorously in 
unprescribed directions. This homely lyric 
has not softened the hearts of our woodmen, 
and we might wish it daily sung to most of 
our public officials, from the congressman 
down to the village highway-commissioner. 
But I am sure that it has softened thousands 
of hearts which ought to have been steeled 
instead. I am sure it excuses to themselves 
thousands of owners of trees which are worth- 
less, or w^orse than worthless, and yet are 
piously preserved. I am sure it has helped 
to deepen the popular feeling that a tree, as 
such, is a sacred object, and that to cut one 
•down which might be preserved is to com- 

291 




Art Out-of-Doors 



mit a crime. But a tree is a tree in the same 
sense only that a book is a book. Even a 
beautiful tree ought sometimes to be felled 
in the interests of beauty, just as an essen- 
tially moral book ought sometimes to be 
taken out of the hands of good children. 

A fine tree which does not seriously inter- 
fere with the worth of more important things 
ought, of course, to be preserved even at a 
considerable sacrifice of money or conveni- 
ence. It is the slow product of many years 
of Nature's bounty working under favorable 
conditions. It is a precious inheritance from 
the past, and should be transmitted to pos- 
terity with as keen a sense of its artistic 
value as though it were a famous picture or 
statue. But when a fine tree does interfere 
with the beauty of something else, then their 
rival claims should be carefully weighed, 
and, if the tree prove the lighter in the bal- 
ance, it should be sacrificed as willingly as 
one vrould scrape a second-rate painting off a 
wall if I\Iichael Angelo's hand were waiting 
to cover it afresh. Our attitude toward 
trees to-day is not rationally artistic ; it is 
purely sentimental. Not once in twenty 
292 



A Word for the Axe 



times does an owner recognize the fact when 
his pleasure-grounds need to be reUeved of a 
tree ; and when he does recognize it, not 
once in twenty times is he courageous enough 
to sharpen and swing his axe. 

When a tree stands in ornamental grounds, 
the question whether or no it is a fine spec- 
imen is less important than the question 
whether it helps or hurts the general effect 
of the grounds, whether it enhances or de- 
tracts from the beauty of neighboring things 
— whether, in short, it stands where it ought 
to stand or where something else, or nothing 
at all, should exist. 

If a conspicuous group of trees is inharmo- 
nious in form or color, and could be made 
harmonious by the removal of one or more 
individuals, there should be no question as 
to their removal, no matter what intrinsic 
claims they may have to admiration. It may 
often be a difficult task to decide which ones 
to sacrifice ; but it is a task that should be 
entered upon without sentimental, supersti- 
tious compunctions. A bleeding stump may 
almost make a heart bleed for the moment, 



293 



Art Out-of-Doors 



but the wound will be quickly healed by the 
increased beauty of the trees which remain. 
In like manner, when a single tree or a 
whole group is detrimental in a wdder w^ay, — 
when it hides a still more beautiful tree or 
group, or a fine middle distance, or a lovely 
stretch of horizon, when it hides anything 
which would be of distinctly more value than 
itself in the scene, or when it gives an un- 
comfortable look of crowding and of exclud- 
ing air and light, — then it should be sac- 
rificed. And a like result will be sure to 
follow : quick forgetfulness of the vanished 
charm will come with the revelation of still 
greater charms. 

It is impossible to take even the shortest 
country or suburban walk without seeing 
places which would be conspicuously im- 
proved if some of their trees were felled. 
Yet even when the benefits of their removal 
are foreseen by the owner, how difficult it is 
to persuade him to fell them ! The house 
may be damp and dark from overshading; 
finer trees may be concealed from sight ; a 
delightful prospect may be shut ofi*; injury 
may be worked in half a dozen ways, and 
294 



A Word for the Axe 



yet, because he 'Moves his trees," they must 
remain. If he really loved trees, and really 
cared for beauty in general, it would hurt 
him more to see a tree palpably out of place 
than not to see it at all. 

If this super-sentimental feeling protected 
only fine trees one could at least compre- 
hend its existence. But quite as often it 
protects the most feeble, ill-grown, and ugly 
specimens. Hundreds of Norway spruces, 
for instance, and of exotic pines, so far de- 
cayed that they are all but dead, disfigure 
our parks and cemeteries. No one professes 
to admire them or to think that they may 
improve. Yet there is sure to be an out- 
cry if their remnant of life is threatened. 
They are trees, and therefore sacred ; their 
sanctity is not impaired by the fact that they 
are moribund, any more than by the fact 
that, even if they were flourishing, the gen- 
eral effect of the scene would be better with- 
out them ; whatever they are, however they 
stand, he is a heartless vandal who says. Cut 
them down. And it is the same in private 
grounds : one daily wonders why this or 
that perishing tree is preserved, and accepts 



295 



Art Out-of-Doors 



in a spirit far from acquiescent the answer, 
Because I ain fond of trees. 

It is time that tliis foohsh sort of senti- 
mentahty should be recognized for what it 
is — an actual drawback to the growth of a 
genuine, intelligent appreciation of trees and 
of landscape-beauty in general. Xo real 
love for Nature can develop among us until 
we distinctly understand the difference be- 
tvreen the nne and the inferior things -'vhich 
Nature grovrs. And we shall not greatly 
advance in gardening art until we are cleaidy 
convinced that general beauty is more im- 
portant than the beauty of any individual 
object, and are hrmly determined to act — 
carefully and discreetly but boldly too — 
upon this conviction. 

Yet still I have not named the most un- 
fortunate enect of our weak dislike to cutting 
trees. The spirit which refuses the axe when 
it is plainly demanded in the interests of 
general beauty, is just as obstinate when it is 
demanded in the interests of the trees them- 
selves. Every walk vre take through public 
parks or private grounds shows us. not only 
296 



A Word for the Axe 



many cases where beauty of general effect is 
injured by superfluous trees, but quite as 
many where the trees themselves are injured 
by overcrowding. Trees which have started 
spontaneously, or have been carefully planted 
by a landscape-gardener in such a way that, 
while young, they agreeably clothed the spot 
and usefully nursed each other, have been al- 
lowed to grow into spindling groves or tan- 
gled thickets which are not beautiful as a 
whole and contain not a single satisfactory 
specimen of tree-development. 

Here, for example, is a solid clump which 
has no beauty of outhne and no variety of 
light and shadow, and in which the colors of 
the different species are mixed in a confusion 
that is not true contrast. Thinned out in 
time, we might have had instead a smaller 
number of line specimens, each graceful in 
form, each contrasting agreeably in color 
with its neighbors, and all together making 
a group or a little wood which would have 
pleased, not only by its beautiful outlines, 
but by its evidence of healthy and luxuriant 
growth. 

Here, again, is a line of trees which 
297 



Art Out-of-Doors 



was intended to form a screen to shut out 
some unsightly object, or to conceal the 
limits of the place. When first planted it 
did form such a screen, although of in- 
considerable height, and with judicious thin- 
ning it might have remained a screen while 
its height increased. But left unthinned, 
with no room to spread its branches and no 
light and air for their nourishment, it has 
grown into a spindling row of bare stems 
which carry poorly developed heads of foliage 
far in the upper air, while between them the 
undesirable object can be plainly seen. 

In still another place we find two or three 
trees growing so close together that their 
branches meet and the growth of each has 
been checked on the side toward its neigh- 
bor. Then, if the trees are of the same spe- 
cies, they may look well if they stand so very 
close that the effect is that of a single hand- 
some head supported by two or three trunks. 
But even when they are of the same species 
they look badly if they stand so far apart 
that we realize we have several poorly grown 
specimens where we might have had a sin- 
gle one in beautiful development. And the 



A Word for the Axe 



effect is distressing indeed when they are of 
ahen, inharmonious kinds. This is not an 
uncommon sight. It is not uncommon to 
find even a tapering evergreen and a round- 
headed deciduous tree growing so close to 
one another that their branches interlock, 
and their discordant forms and colors and 
textures are welded together in a union as 
unnatural to the mind as displeasing to the 
eye. 

These words for the axe have often been 
spoken before. In all lands, in all times, 
thoughtless persons have probably held it 
criminal, under any avoidable circum- 
stances, to cut down a tree; and so the 
whole literature of gardening art echoes the 
complaint of the modern artist — the cry that 
no difficulty with which he has to cope is so 
great as the difficulty of making an owner 
thin out his plantations at the proper time 
and in the proper way. Brown, the famous 
English landscape-gardener of the eighteenth 
century, has been bitterly abused by later 
generations because he bequeathed them mul- 
titudes of close, round, hard clumps of trees, 



299 



Art Out-of-Doors 



spotted about on lawns and meadows. But 
there is no doubt that he intended these 
clumps to be thinned so that they would 
eventually resolve themselves into lighter, 
more varied, graceful, and naturalistic 
groups. When we read of " Brown's 
clumps" as objects which the planter of 
to-day should be careful not to imitate, it is 
not Browm himself who is really put in the 
pillory. It is not Brown, but his clients ; 
and like unto them have been almost all 
the landscape-gardener's clients in our own 
America. 

It should be remembered that no land- 
scape-gardener can protect himself against 
a fate like Brown's by planting only those 
trees which he would like to see in the full- 
grown group or wood. In the first place, 
few owners would be content to see their 
grounds, for a long period, merely dotted 
over with small isolated trees ; in the sec- 
ond place, young trees must often be 
planted closely for mutual protection against 
wind and cold ; and in the third place, no 
one can predict with accuracy how any given 
tree will grow, and so a margin must be left 
300 



A Word for the Axe 



against possible contingencies, not only^of 
life and death, but of pecuharity in devel- 
opment. A planter can hardly imagine in 
detail the group he wants, and then plant 
for that group and for nothing else. The 
best he can do is to decide upon the general 
size and character of his group ; plant in 
such a way that the probabihty of getting 
something near to it in effect will be in- 
sured : and then watch his plantation and 
thin it out in accordance, on the one hand, 
with his own wishes, and, on the other 
hand, with the idiosyncrasies of his devel- 
oping trees. 

Of course, such a process as this needs 
care and thought and taste. But it is just 
this fact that I want to impress upon my 
readers — the fact that only by the exercise 
of care and thought and taste, not merely 
in the act of planting but continually after- 
ward, can beautiful results be achieved in 
any branch of gardening art. When a 
plantation has been made, then the real 
work of creating it has but just begun ; this 
work must be prolonged for many years to 
preserve the beauty of the trees as individ- 



301 



Art Out-of-Doors 



uals, no less than to preserve the bea^jty of 
the general ettecr of the scene ; and it must 
very often consist in larger part of the judi- 
cious cutting-out of individuals which are 
not only superfluous but detrimental. Yet 
the hardest task of an artist is to persuade 
an owner to cut down trees which were 
never intended long to remain. Generally 
it is harder still for an owner to persuade 
himself to sacrince trees of his own plant- 
ing, even though, by his own confession, 
they might much better be out of the way. 
And when the owner is indelinitely multi- 
plied until he becomes a public, then in- 
deed the cause of the beneficent axe often 
seems well-nigh hopeless. 

Central Park, and Prospect Park in Brook- 
lyn, are merely examples of a condition of 
things vrhich is common throughout the 
public pleasure-grounds of America. They 
need nothing to make them wholly admi- 
rable except that their trees should be 
thinned ; this they need in the most pitiful 
fashion : yet never in the public's sight is 
one tree cut. whether it be fine or ugly, 
alive or dead, that an outcry is not raised. 

502 



A Word for the Axe 



Scores of people seem to have nothing to do 
but watch for the superintendent's axe and, 
when they see it gleam, protest to him or 
his workmen, to the park-commissioners, or 
to the public through the newspapers. Often 
they protest on general principles, professing 
to know nothing of trees except that they 
should never be cut down. Sometimes they 
are a httle more explicit ; they know the 
names of certain trees, they like to lounge 
out of doors in pleasant weather, and so 
they call themselves lovers of Nature and 
explain at length how their feelings have 
been outraged. 

I have heard and read a multitude of such 
protests. I have never met with one which 
recognized that a park is an artistic organ- 
ism, a complex thing of beauty, and that, 
therefore, if it is to be kept beautiful, other 
things than the intrinsic excellence of this 
tree or that must be considered. I have 
never met with one which gave a valid rea- 
son why any ^^slaughtered tree should not 
have been slaughtered, while I have never 
walked through either of our parks with a 
person who knew anything of art or any- 

303 



Art Out-of-Doors 



thing of trees, without hstening to lamenta- 
tions that the axe had not been much more 
freely used. 

There are literally thousands of trees in 
Central Park which ought to come down. 
If they do not, the beauty of the park fifty 
or even ten years from now will be far less 
than it is to-day. But when a single one is 
condennied the chopper is wise who gets him 
up very early in the morning ; a little later 
he may come almost into personal conflict 
with some foolish enthusiast who loves 
trees." Xo such enthusiast, I am sure, has 
any idea hov\" many thousands of trees have 
already been cut in Central Park without 
his knowledge. He has never missed them 
although, probably, he has recognized the 
increased beauty of the spoi where they once 
stood. If he could be told about them and 
made to remember just how their sites used 
to look, perhaps he might understand a lit- 
tle of the meaning of good art and good 
tree-culture — ^just enough to make him stop 
a moment, when next he sees a sharpened 
axe, and question whether its wielding may 
not do a great deal more good than harm. 

304 



XV 

The Love of Nature 



" Though we travel the world over to find beauty, 
we must carry it with us or we find it not. . . . 
The difference between landscape and landscape is 
small, but there is a great difference in beholders. 
There is nothing so wonderful in any landscape as 
the necessity of being beautiful under which every 
landscape lies." 

— Emerson, 



XV 




'LL human beings draw pleasure 
I from Nature in an instinctive 
i way. They enjoy fresh air, 
' sunshine, and open outlooks ; 



they prefer a blue sky to a gray one, and 
will confess that a green landscape is pleas- 
anter to the eye than grimy pavements, even 
though for other reasons they may prefer to 
live in town. 

Such likings as these prove no love of 
Nature ; they are almost purely physical ; 
sentiment has little more to do vrith them, 
than with the pleasure of an animal 
basking in the sun. But the majority of 
people, even among the uncultivated classes, 
have a deeper feeling for Nature than this, 
and appreciate something of its beauty. 
Stupid and brutalized indeed is the man or 
woman who does not notice a briUiant bed 
of flowers, or would not be impressed by the 
sight of a great mountain-chain. On Sundays 



Art Out-of-Doors 



our parks are crowded with very poor people 
vrho spread through every quiet walk and 
shadowy glade, and like nothing so well as 
to lie or saunter on the grass ; and although 
much of their pleasure is simply physical, 
anyone who has sympathetically mingled 
with them knows that part of it is of finer 
quality. The beauty of the landscape speaks 
to even the dullest eye, and appeals through 
it to the most sluggish imagination. The 
roughest cockney admires the beauty of the 
shores of the Hudson when he sees them on 
some summer excursion, and is impressed 
by the splendor of the sea when for the first 
time he stands on a shore where its waves 
are breaking. 

This instinctive admiration for the charms 
of the natural world is what many people 
understand by the love of Nature. But it 
is not, in any true sense, the love of Nat- 
ure. It is merely a love for natural things 
which are beautiful, of course, but which 
are also unfamiliar and therefore striking; 
Let the dweller in tenement-houses inhabit 
a lodge in Central Park for a while, and he 
would probably seek his Sunday entertain- 

308 



The Love of Nature 



ment in a down-town street. Let him work 
on a North River schooner, and he would 
quickly forget to notice the beauty of the 
shores. 

And this same attitude toward Nature 
may be observed in persons of much wider 
cultivation. To them also familiar natural 
things soon grow uninteresting. The arti- 
sans who crowd our Park on Sunday enjoy 
its beauty more than do most of the wealth- 
ier folk who drive there every day. It is 
curious to notice how few of these ever seem 
to look at anything but the people in the 
other carriages, and how seldom they turn 
from the fashionable East Drive into the 
much more beautiful West Drive. And it 
is still more curious to find that scores of 
them, who have made pilgrimages in search 
of natural beauty from the Nile to the Sierras 
and from the St. Lawrence to ]\Iexico, have 
never left their carriages to see what the 
pathways in their own park might reveal. 
The Ramble is as unknown to them as though 
it lay in China, and they exclaim in surprise 
if you tell them they might travel a thousand 
miles and see nothing prettier. 

309 



Art Out-of -Doors 



People of this kind, I say, do not care 
about Nature ; at most they care for those 
conspicuous natural effects which they call 
scenery. Scenery is not the whole of natural 
beauty; it is only one manifestation of it; 
and a person who delights in a magnificent 
view but finds all flat regions hopelessly tire- 
some, or who feels the grandeur of a rocky 
coast but not the lovehness of a green-fringed, 
quiet shore, is in a rudimentary stage of 
development. His attitude is like that of one 
who should profess to love flowers but, while 
admiring a rose, should despise a forget-me- 
not. The true lover of Nature is he who 
gives interested attention to all natural effects 
and forms, and finds much beauty where the 
average eye finds none. 

Of course there are grades and degrees of 
natural beauty, and for each the true lover 
will have a corresponding degree of ad- 
miration. He will not call a Belgian plain 
as beautiful as the valley of the Rhone, or 
declare that a nettle has the charm of a 
branch of apple-blossoms. But there are few 
plants which have no beauty of any kind ; 
and there are few earthly spots, where man's 

310 



The Love of Nature 



hand has not obliterated Nature's intentions, 
so devoid of attraction that the sensitive eye 
and mind cannot enjoy them keenly. 

Admiration, says a French writer on art, 
is the active, Eesthetic form of curiosity." 
And this means that he who really admires 
the works of God will be lovingly curious 
about the hyssop on the wall as well as about 
the cedar of Lebanon, and will see more to 
please him in a rough bit of pasture-land 
than the average person sees in a whole fertile 
valley. Who can love Nature better than 
the landscape-painter, spending his whole 
life in the effort to transfer her features to 
his canvas ? But no one is less in need 
than the landscape-painter of what is called 
scenery. It is not he who greatly prefers 
the canon of the Yellowstone to the banks of 
the little river near at hand. When he is 
brought face to face with scenic grandeurs 
he appreciates them more keenly than any- 
one else, but he gladly comes back to his 
quiet plains, his placid pools, his little forest- 
glades. Nor is it merely because these 
things are better fitted for painting than 
grander things. Any little corner of the 

311 



Art Out-of-Doors 



world is enough for him, as a thing to enjoy- 
no less than as a thing to paint. Delacroix 

was not a landscape-painter, so we cannot 
suspect him of professional bias ; and there 
has never been a painter whom we could 
more easily credit with an inborn love for 
striking and even spectaculai' kinds of beauty. 
But fine scenery was not essential to his en- 
joyment of Nature. ^^The poorest little 
alley/' he wrote one day from a shabby 
suburb of Paris. with its straight little leaf- 
less saphngs, in a dull and flat horizon, can 
say as much to the imagination as the most 
bepraised of sites. This tiny cotyledon 
piercing the earth, this violet shedding its 
first whirt of perfume, are enchanting. I 
love such things as much as the pines of 
Italy." 

This is the voice of the true lover of 
Nature, and like it was Corot's voice, con- 
stantly praising, not the grandeurs which he 
had seen on his travels, but the tender, 
gentle, subtile beauties around his home at 
Ville d'Avray. and. more than anything 
else, the humblest of them all — ''my leaves 
and my little birds." If one is born to love 
312 



The Love of Nature 



Nature as those men did and all true artists 
do, or if he ever learns the beneficent 
lesson, the quietest scenes vvill impress him, 
the most familiar will be ever new. The 
shadow of a blackberry- vine as it trails over 
a gray rock, will give him as delightful an 
emotion as the sight of a great mountain ; 
and custom will not stale his pleasure, for it 
will be as infinitely varied, as perpetually 
renewed, as the leaves on the trees, the 
blades of grass in the fields, the tints in the 
sunset skies. 

People who run about, summer after sum- 
mer, in search of new landscapes to admire, 
will often tell you that it is because they 
love Nature. But if they did they vvould 
be much less apt to run about ; they could 
exercise their passion within narrower limits, 
and they would be likely to content them- 
selves within such limits because a particu- 
lar love for particular beauties would result 
from long acquaintance with them. 

In Mrs. Robbins's Rescue of an old Old 
Place," she rightly says that one of the 
great benefits which spring from the posses- 
ses 



Art Out-of-Doors 



sion of a bit of country soil is the develop- 
ment of the love of home^ the suppression of 
that restless desire for change which makes 
of so many Americans possible tramps" 
instead of established citizens. But a gen- 
uine love for Nature may serve a person 
pretty well in place of the actual ownership 
of land ; for in whatever corner of the 
country he may chance to live, he will see, 
understand, and appreciate every part and 
phase of its beauty, and thus, in a sense, 
feel himself the owner of the whole region ; 
and the oftener he visits it, the stronger and 
more intimate will become his attachment, 
his feeling of possession. Of course he will 
not be without a keen desire to see as much 
of the big world as possible, and to learn 
how many kinds of beauty it can show. 
But this desire w^ill not be the imperious 
need for ^ ^ a change ' ' which is felt by less 
fortunate souls; and often it will be so much 
weaker than his wish to stay among the 
things which he knows best that year after 
year will pass and foreign lands, or even 
neighboring country-sides, will tempt in 
vain while he watches new clouds blow over 



314 



The Love of Nature 

his famihar hills, new flowers spring up in 

his familiar woods, and every long-loved 
shrub and tree assume new aspects with 
each season's growth and alterations. The 
changes which Nature brings every moment 
before his eyes will satiate his desire for 
novelty. 

This is the true secret of every kind of 
love : if a thing really appeals to us, the 
better we know it the more we care about 
it. The true lover of Nature loves her as 
he loves mankind. He has his favorite 
corners of the world as he has his friends, 
and does not constantly wish to exchange 
them for others, or perpetually contrast their 
attractions with the attractions of others. 
If everyone admires them his joy in them 
is increased ; but if he is almost alone in 
his appreciation, this fact is in itself the 
source of a special kind of pleasure and 
pride. He seeks for novelty and freshness 
in Nature as he likes to make acquaintance 
with interesting strangers, but comes back 
as gladly to the familiar scene as to the 
familiar face. The tree which he has 
watched as it grew from a sapling to fine 



Art Out-of-Doors 



maturity, delights him even more than a 
finer tree about which no memories or 
hopes are ckistered, for even if he has not 
planted and watered it himself, even if it 
grows in the neighboring forest instead of 
his owm field, he loves it with a personal, 
proprietary affection. When he drives 
through a beautiful new country his eyes are 
perpetually charmed ; but when he drives 
throusfh the roads around his home his heart 
is touched and his imagination is stirred 
by the beauty of past yeai's as well as by 
the beauty of to-day, and by the hope that 
next year's beauty also may belong to him. 
Each tree is a friend, each bush has a 
special message for his special ear, each 
flower is greeted as the child of other flowers 
which he knew last summer in the same 
corner of the roadside. He not only ad- 
mires what he sees — he is interested by 
everything he sees in a sense that is im- 
possible where things are beheld for the first 
time. And true love, if it means admira- 
tion, means interest also, whether inani- 
mate things or human beings are in ques- 
tion. 



316 



The Love of Nature 



Therefore, one who truly loves Nature 
does not need what are commonly called 
fine views ; he needs no great ranges of 
mountains, picturesque stretches of rocky 
coast, or outlooks over wide expanses of val- 
ley, hill, and river. Every view not seriously 
marred by some incongruous work of man 
has its charm for his eyes. And he recog- 
nizes, moreover, that a very fine view must 
often be bought at the expense of other beau- 
ties. If, for instance, there are mountains 
around him, he cannot have that far, low 
horizon-line v\^hich, stretching its mighty 
curve at a seemingly immeasurable distance, 
gives an unequalled sense of space, freedom, 
and infinity. " I have never seen the sky 
before," a painter once exclaimed who had 
passed his life in hilly regions and now for 
the first time stood in the flat, quiet country 
near Cape Cod j I did not know that it was 
so vast or so near or so round, or that there 
were so many stars, or that a sight of them 
all could be so magnificent. I never before 
watched the moon come up from below the 
earth instead of merely from behind the hills ; 
and I never saw the whole of a sunset until 



3^7 



Art Out-of-Doors 



I came here." And he seemed to think that 
the panorama of the morning and evening and 
midnight heavens was as admirable as any 
terrestrial panorama which could be unrolled. 

Again, in our crude and often maltreated 
land, grandeur in the distance often means a 
forlorn raggedness in the foregrounds, and a 
sensitive eye thinks the foreground of a pict- 
ure as important as its background. Where 
forests have ruthlessly been cut away, and 
where there is not a rich soil to encourage 
neat and careful methods of cultivation, 
primeval beauty has largely vanished and 
the beauty of civihzation has not taken its 
place. The true lover of Nature will feel 
this painfully, and all the magnificence of 
the mountains beyond may not compensate 
him for the lack of that harmonious repose 
in general effect which comes when all parts 
of a picture are in keeping. 

I do not say that the true lover of Nature 
cares nothing for grand scenery- — only that 
he does not actually need it. Great things 
impress him, but sm.all ones content him, and 
he gathers pleasure from the roadside grass 
as well as from the giant oak or the sky-line 

318 



The Love of Nature 



of a rugged mountain -range. There is a 
beauty of the Hly and a beauty of the pine, 
a beauty of the mountain and a beauty of the 
plain, a beauty of wide outlooks, of stately, 
high- walled amphitheatres, and of gentle, se- 
questered corners. One kind necessarily ex- 
cludes the other kinds ; but that does not mat- 
ter if each arrests the eye, interests the mind, 
and appeals to the imagination and the heart. 

Everyone realizes that more kinds of art 
appeal to the connoisseur than to the ordinary 
observer, and that he does not exalt showy, 
spectacular kinds above all others. All the 
greatest artists in the world did not paint 
palace-ceilings or big altar-pictures ; some 
of the world's most famous masterpieces 
measure only a couple of spans and do not 
show a single note of vivid color. And so 
it is with Nature and her masterpieces. The 
finest composition wrought with mountain- 
peaks and deep ravines is not more beautiful 
or wonderful than one which can be wrought 
with a gray bowlder, a pine-tree, and a car- 
pet of moss or fern ; the most splendid pan- 
oramic background is not more enchanting 
than may be a foreground of flowery meadow, 

319 



Art Out-of-Doors 



with a middle distance of woodland, and no 
background at all except the luminous sky. 

Of course some people are born with a 
deep and true love for Nature, but even in 
them I think this love does not show itself 
very early in life. In the majority of cases 
it seems to have been gradually developed 
rather than spontaneously felt. And, while 
no one not born with a poet's soul can ever 
learn to feel Nature's charms as a Corot or a 
Wordsworth did, anyone can learn to see 
themx pretty clearly unless his mind is hope- 
lessly sluggish, desperately prosaic. 

How can such knovv^ledge be acquired ? 
One way, as I have said in speaking of trees, 
is to study fine landscape-pictures. Anoth- 
er is the landscape-painter's own way. The 
practice of painting, even in the most un- 
trained, amateurish fashion, may be an ex- 
cellent help toward the development of a 
love for Nature. If an intelligent young girl 
would spend an hour a day, during a single 
summer, faithfully trying to set down in paint 
what she sees in Nature — now a flower or a 
tree, now a bit of sunset-sky, a corner of 

320 



The Love of Nature 



a hedge-row, or a little stretch of river-bank 
— she would find at the end of the season 
that she had gained new eyes. She would 
see a thousand things she had never seen be- 
fore, find beauty in many that before had 
seemed ugly, and realize the difference be- 
tween merely ^Miking" Nature and truly 
appreciating it. It would not matter if all 
her studies were failures and were torn up in 
disgust as fast as they were finished. She 
would have attained a great end, achieved a 
real success ; for she would have enlarged 
her own powers of enjoyment to the sweeten- 
ing and dignifying of all the rest of her life. 
Much amateur sketching is done in this coun- 
try every summer, but I fear it is not often 
done in this spirit. The aim is to produce 
pretty pictures, not to cultivate the painter's 
own intelligence. And while the aim gen- 
erally remains unattained, intelligence is 
scarcely increased ; for, as the prettiness of 
the sketch has been the ruling motive, a sub- 
ject has most often been chosen because it 
was easy to do, not because it was particu- 
larly interesting in itself, and it has been 
superficially looked at, not lovingly studied. 
321 



XVI 

A Word for Books 



" When science is learned in love and its powers 
are wielded by love they will appear the supplements 
and continuance of the material creation." 

— Emersm. 



XVI 




NOTHER way to develop a love 
for Nature is to ask the aid of 
books. Writers like Thoreau, 
Jefferies, and Burroughs not 



only paint beautiful pictures for our mental 
eye, but stimulate our powers of actual ob- 
servation ; they tell us what they have seen, 
and thus tell us what to look for in our turn. 
And artists' biographies are full of hints 
and guiding-threads, while now and then a 
painter, like Fromentin, writes descriptions 
which are as wonderful as Thoreau's and, 
by their very unlikeness to a naturalist's de- 
scriptions, greatly assist these in enlarging 
our appreciative sense. But to enlarge this 
as widely and as quickly as possible, there is 
no helper so good as a botanical handbook. 

A singular misunderstanding of the pur- 
pose and results of botanical study seems to 
prevail among intelligent Americans. I do 



Art Out-of-Doors 



not know that I can illustrate it better than 
by quoting a paragraph printed not long ago 
in a children's magazine which, month by 
month, devotes several pages to out-door 
things with the professed desire that our 
young folk may be led to study Nature for 
themselves in her woods and fields. 

This paragraph began with a reference to 
some previous article in which a familiar 
little plant had been called Epigcea repens 
instead of trailing-arbutus or May-flower; 
and then it said : 

If we begin to use the scientific names, where 
shall we stop ? The next thing will be to call the 
delicate spring-beauty, Claytonia Virginica. . . . 
(By the way, the botanists seem to have had a 
hobby for calling things after Virginia and Carolina 
and Canada ; when they got tired of using these 
they named all the rest of the plants after foreign 
travellers.) But there is worse yet to come. . . . 
The truth is that the botanists themselves some- 
times have two or three names for the same plant. 
. . . And just think how we have been twitted 
with having different common names in different 
parts of the country ! Since I can remember, the 
dear little bluets were named Oldejilandia ccerulea. 
Afterward they were changed back to Houstonia 
cccrelea by the great Mr. Gray himself. How much 



A Word for Books 



simpler just to call the pretty things bluets ! The 
truth is, my dears, that the Latin names make a 
herbarium look very learned ; and when you col- 
lect one I hope you will take great pains to have the 
plants properly labelled. But what would your poets 
do with Houstonia carulea in their verses ? I do 
not think such terms are suitable for the finer uses 
of life and literature ; so I hope you children all 
will take pains to learn the common names of the 
flowers. I only vrish you could tell me ever}- one ; 
but perhaps someone will yet make a dictionary of 
them. 

I do not think that more misleading coun- 
sels can ever have been conveyed in a par- 
agraph as short as this. 

In the first place, it implies that, as a 
class, the scientific names of plants are less 
agreeable to the ear than the vernacular 
names. But is milkwort prettier than poly- 
gala, or woad-waxen than genista, or tick- 
trefoil than desmodium, or false-indigo than 
baptisia, or false-mitrewort than tiarella ? 
Which would a poet prefer to say — sweet- 
gimi or liquidambar, pepperidge or nyssa, 
fetid-marigold or dysodia, sneeze-weed or 
helenium, shin-leaf or pyrola? And would 
he really object very much even to claytonia 



327 



Art Out-of-Doors 



or houstonia ? Of course a list pointing the 
other way might be compiled as easily as 
this one could be greatly extended. I do 
not mean to say that all scientific plant- 
names are musical and all vernacular ones 
are ugly ; only that the balance of beauty is 
perhaps in favor of the scientific names, and 
that it is certainly foolish to arraign them as 
a whole from the euphonic standpoint. 

It is still more foolish, however, to imply 
that a hard and fast line can be drawn be- 
tween the two classes of names. If we refuse 
to be /^scientific," what shall we call a 
dahlia, or an aster, a wistaria, a fuchsia, an 
azalea, a chrysanthemum, a rhododendron, 
or a sassafras ? Must we call an arethusa 
and a calypso each simply an orchid to avoid 
scientific terminology? And, again, is 
calypso or arethusa a name unfit for poetic or 
any other " fine " kind of use ? 

The children who read this paragraph ought 
to have been given very different lessons. 
They should have been told that no line can 
be drawn between the two classes of plant- 
names ; that sometimes the scientific name 
is perfectly familiar and common and, in- 

328 



A Word for Books 



deed, is the only one the plant has ever 
borne ; that sometimes there is another which 
is common in the sense of being English, but 
not in the sense of being more familiar even 
to non-scientific ears ; that sometimes the 
botanical and the vernacular names differ 
only through the change of a letter or two, 
as with orchid, heliotrope, lily, and gentian ; 
that sometimes, of course, the vernacular 
name is so well known and sufficient that 
even a botanist does not use the other in con- 
versation or ordinary writing ; and finally, 
that the specific botanical name need not 
always be tacked to the generic — even a 
botanist does not say claytonia virginica 
when claytonia would do as well, or refuse 
to speak of a houstonia without adding the 
ccerulea. 

Then, would it not have been better to 
explain why botanical names have sometimes 
been duphcated than simply to jeer at the 
fact ? Does not the fact that so many of 
them refer to Carolina, Virginia, and Canada 
seem interesting instead of ludicrous if one 
understands that they were bestowed at a 
time when European botanists knew little 

329 



Art Out-of-Doors 



more about America than that it included 
these three provinces ? And is there not a 
very interesting significance in the use of a 
personal appellation when it is recognized as 
referring to the first discoverer or describer 
of a plant ? 

Again, these children should have been 
told that the more anxious they are to learn 
all the common names of plants, the more 
needful it is that they should learn their 
scientific names. How often, when we dis- 
cover a strange wild flower, or even a new 
garden-flower, do we find anyone to tell us 
its English name ? But any book on botany 
will tell it, if we know how to determine its 
scientific name. " Perhaps someone will 
make a dictionary " of common plant-names, 
says the author of our foolish paragraph. 
This is just what has been done by botanists 
in their handbooks, and what can never be 
done by any other method than theirs ; for 
how can a plant be painted so that its right 
to a name is made plain, except by means of 
the precisely descriptive terms which botan- 
ists employ? Any person who has even 
the m.ost superficial acquaintance with his 



330 



A Word for Books 



Gray's ]\Ianual " knows the vernacular 
names of our plants far better, I am sure, 
than the most enthusiastic flower-lover who 
has scorned all scientific aid. 

I am sorry to say that it is not only an 
occasional writer for children who thinks in 
this crude, vague fashion that systematic 
knowledge must lessen the love for natural 
beauty. Very many people, intelligent in 
other matters, are quick upon all occasions 
to jeer at botanical study and to discourage 
its pursuit even in its simplest and most at- 
tractive forms. They VN'ould be shocked if 
charged with indifference to knowledge of 
other kinds, but they seem to consider the 
desire to study botany a foolish endeavor 
to pry into a subject so profound that only 
a smattering of it can ever be acquired ; a 
smattering of knowledge they declare to 
be worse than entire ignorance ; and they 
also insist that the more one learns about 
plants the less he will appreciate their 
beauty. The scientific attitude is held up 
as the reverse of the attitude of enjoyment ; 
scientific knowledge is proclaimed to be 

331 



Art Out-of-Doors 



deadly to artistic or poetic feeling. Why/* 
it is often said by those who should speak 
more wisely, can anyone want to pull flow- 
ers to pieces to learn their hideous Latin 
names ? What is the good of it in the end, 
and must it not destroy all sense for that 
charm which we, in our happy ignorance, 
enjoy so keenly? No one beheves that a 
knowledge of astronomy destroys all pleasure 
in the splendor of the midnight sky, or a 
knowledge of geology all interest in the 
grandeur and variety of the earth's surface. 
But trees and flowers must not be studied 
unless the student is willing to exchange the 
pleasure of the eye for whatever barren satis- 
faction he may find in hard names and with- 
ered, dissected specimens. 

It is probable that one cause of this odd 
belief is the idea that to study botany means 
simply to learn Latin names, and that the 
knowledge of these names is its own only end 
and aim. If this were true, botany would 
indeed be a dry and not very useful study, 
although there would still be some benefit 
in being able to speak of plants, to men of 
any nation, exactly instead of inexactly, and 

332 



A Word for Books 



to speak of any possible plant instead of a 
comparatively restricted number. But to 
learn Latin names is only the first step in 
learning to know the plants they represent — 
a needful step, but in no sense an end or aim. 

The names of plants are important in the 
sam^e way as the names of people. We must 
discover a stranger's name if we are to 
identify him, to realize his relationships, his 
place in society, and his role in the world, 
to remember his individuality, and gain 
more information by speaking about him 
with others. To a person who knows noth- 
ing of botany, the trees and flowers which 
he calls familiar are like the attractive faces 
that meet him day after day in the street — 
unnamed faces representing lives and souls 
which are hidden from his ken. But to one 
who has some knowledge of botany, famihar 
plants are like intimate friends, and unfamil- 
iar ones like interesting strangers with whom, 
he can immediately make acquaintance. 

In studying botany we learn first such 
facts as we already know with regard to 
human beings. We learn what plants are, 
how they are born, live, and grov/, and what 

333 



Art Out-of-Doors 



is meant by their nearer or more distant 
degrees of relationship — how and why they 
are grouped in what may be called families, 
clans, commmiities, and nations. And then, 
when a simple handbook can be so used 
that after examining a plant we can iind its 
name, all its other characteristics may be 
read at a glance. Finding its name, we 
discover the manner of its growth, the traits 
which ally it Avith its relatives and those 
which constitute its personality, the regions 
where it is common or rare, the nature of 
the spots in which it may be sought most 
hopefully, and the seasons of its blooming 
and its fruiting. All this is worth knov>-ing, 
even at the cost of dealing for the moment 
with the very ugliest of Latin names. And 
if a m.an or a child has any aesthetic suscepti- 
bihty, his held of enjoyment will be greatly 
vvidened by such knowledge. If a child 
finds a rosy arethusa with twin blossoms, will 
his pleasure in its beauty be decreased by 
knowing that twin-flowered arethusas are 
very rare? Or if he discovers that the 
pretty little bunch-berry v>-hich carpets some 
recess in the v^'oods is first-cousin to the big 

334 



A Word for Books 



flowering-dog^vood, and discovers too the 
reasons why, will not his interest in it be 
increased ? And will it seem less charming 
to him as it grows more interesting? Let 
him learn why an orchid is an orchid — why 
the tiny ladies' -tresses in the field deserve 
the name as much as the gorgeous cattleya 
or oncidium of the greenhouse, and he has 
learned something which surely cannot de- 
crease his enjoyment of the beauty of either. 

But to do this, you say, beautiful flowers 
must be pulled to pieces, and this will 
'^deaden the sense of beauty." By no 
means. The truth is quite the other way. 
No one who has not once pulled a flower of 
a given kind to pieces can fully realize how 
beautiful it is. All its beauty is not in its 
larger features or on the outside of its cup. 
In the interior, in the hidden recesses where 
the great work of reproduction goes on in a 
m.yriad difterent ways each more marvellous 
than the other, resides a great part of the 
beauty of all flowers, and the major part of 
the beauty of not a fevr. Even if it led to 
nothing but a knowledge of the delight which 
Narure takes in making the tiniest features 



Art Out-of-Doors 



of her products lovely to behold, the close 
examination of floral structures would be 
well worth many hours of a busy man's 
time. Once this has been learned, we do 
not need always to see it. Then, seeing 
the flower as a whole, we not only know its 
name, habits, and relationships, but remem- 
ber its structure. The exterior suggests the 
interior, and a knowledge of the interior 
explains the reasons for the lovely individ- 
uality of the envelope. 

This should suflice, I think, to prove that 
even a smattering of botanical knowledge is 
better than none at all. Archbishop Whate- 
ley long ago pointed out that this word has 
two distinct meanings. In one sense it 
means a superficial acquaintance with a sub- 
ject joined to a pretentious display, or at 
least an overweening estimate, of slight 
knowledge. But in the other sense it simply 
means that acquaintance with main facts 
which must be the beginning of all knowl- 
edge. Even the slightest smattering of 
botanical knowledge, in this latter sense, 
will greatly increase instead of lessening the 
enjoyment of any individual plant. 

33^ 



A Word for Books 



But there will be a further gain. Once 
let a person begin to study plants and he will 
desire to increase the hst of his acquaint- 
ances and then he will use his eyes as he 
never did before. He will discover many 
beautiful plants of whose existence in his 
neighborhood he had never dreamed. He 
will see a hundred things where before he 
had seen ten. Having learned to value the 
beauty which is small in scale, he will seek 
for it instead of waiting for it to strike his 
eye, and will find it in the most unpromising 
places. He will delight in the infinitesimal 
blossoms on the door-weed where the passive, 
unawakened eye discovers no blossoms at all; 
and the flowers of the pig-weed, even, de- 
spised of the multitude, will be to him a 
treasury of interest. Nor, surely, will his 
new appreciation of humble charms like 
these lessen his feehng for the splendor of 
the iris he finds in the swamp, or of the 
turk's-cap-lily that flaunts by the wayside. 

Great devotion to scientific study does, 
indeed, occasionally seem to kill the aes- 
thetic sense. But this is not because science 
and a love of beauty are necessarily at vari- 

337 



Art Out-of-Doors 



ance. It is simply because all men of scien- 
tific instincts have not also the aesthetic 
instinct, and because, moreover, the pow- 
ers of the human mind are limited, and an 
intense absorption in one aspect of Nature 
may leave neither time nor strength for the 
consideration of another aspect. An inborn 
aesthetic instinct may die by atrophy while 
all the soul's life-blood goes to feed a scien- 
tific instinct. 

But this is not always the case. I know 
some professional botanists who have a 
keener eye and a deeper feeling for Nature's 
beauty than any amateur botanist, not to 
say any ignoramus, whom I have ever met. 
The scientific study of plants seems to have 
developed their aesthetic faculties just as the 
serious study of art develops the landscape- 
painter's. 

Nor am I pleading for a thorough study 
of botany — ^only for just so much knowledge 
of it as will clarify, stimulate, direct, and 
concentrate yet broaden the love of natural 
beauty ; for just so much as will make us feel 
at home amid the decorations of Nature's 
world, and put us on friendly terms with her 

338 



A Word for Books 



in her gardening work and her landscape- 
painting. 

I have named Richard Jefferies as a de- 
lightful painter of the outdoor world. He 
instructs us much in many ways, but I think 
never better than when he confesses that he 
had no botanical knowledge. Read his little 
book called The Open Air." It proves 
that he was one of the closest observers of 
Nature who has ever written, yet that through- 
out his life he prided himself upon being a 
dilettarite. I do not know that he would 
have liked this word, but it is the one which 
fits his case : he sturdily refused to study 
either science or art. Nevertheless, he was 
not content with his own ignorance. On 
every page he reveals that he was a born 
artist — one who noticed every faintest shade 
of color, effect of light, andsubtility of form, 
and described them in words which only an 
artist or an experienced student of art can 
fully appreciate. On the other hand, he 
continually shows a yearning for that exact- 
ness in knowledge which only scientific 
study can supply. And, as he was thus 
born to know both art and science, and as 



339 



Art Out-of-Doors 



he refused to know either, he was always a 
discontented lover of Nature. Finding no 
outlet for his pas^sion except through the in- 
adequacy of words, he felt that his obser- 
vation had no purpose : he was continually 
questioning why beauty exists, what it im- 
plies, and how it can be as beneficial as he 
bhndly felt it must be. In the essay called 
^^Wild Flowers" there are curiously con- 
tradictory passages. '-'The first conscious 
thought about wild flowers," he says, ^^was 
to find out their names — the first conscious 
pleasure ; and then I began to see many that 
I had not previously noticed. Once you 
wish to identify them there is nothing es- 
capes, down to the little white chick-weed 
of the path and the moss of the wall. . . . 
Plants everywhere, hiding behind every tree, 
under the leaves, in the shady places, beside 
the dry furrows of the field ; they are only 
just behind something, hidden openly. The 
instant you look for them they multiply a 
hundred-fold." 

Once you luish to identify thenij he says ; 
does it not seem as though he Avould imme- 
diately have turned to books for their ready 

340 



A Word for Books 



help ? But no ; he confesses how hard it is 
to learn the names of plants from one's 
friends ; he would like, he says, to have a 
botanist at hand to tell him what this thing 
is and that ; he carries books of colored pict- 
ures around wiih him and mourns over their 
insufficiency and inaccuracy ; but further 
than this in the path of inquiry he will not 
go. He has an abnormal hatred for printed 
facts. If/' he says, someone tells you a 
plant, you know it at once and never forget 
it, but to learn it from a book is another 
matter; it does not at once take root in the 
mind ; it has to be seen several times before 
you are satisfied — you waver in your con- 
victions." 

It seems odd that so patient, so loving an 
observer of plants was unwilling to take the 
trouble to read about them ' - several times ' ' 
in order to know them, but still more odd 
that he felt this would be needful. It is as 
though he thought books were something 
apart from men, not as though men were 
speaking from their pages. Why should he 
have trusted the actual voice of a botanist 
and not his printed voice? Very certainly 

341 



Art Out-of -Doors 



he would have trusted this, he would have 
felt that one may learn more quickly, more 
accurately, from print than from conversa- 
tion, if he had ever examined the right kind 
of books ; for in their pages not only the 
name of his plant but its character, its 
affinities, its life-history, v/ould at once have 
been spread before him. 

A careless reader may be deluded by Jef- 
feries's book into thinking that, as he en- 
joyed so deeply and described so well, ig- 
norance must be a blessing. But a more 
careful reader will trace in every page the 
record of a mutilation of pleasure, a limit- 
ing of intelhgence, a loss of golden oppor- 
tunities, due simply to a lack of elementary 
scientific knowledge. Jefferies has left us a 
delightful series of books about Nature ; 
had he studied a little botany they would 
have been twice as delightful to us, and he 
would have got thrice as much delight as he 
did get from their making. He was always 
in some puzzle which he could not read — 
some openly hidden'* puzzle which the 
simplest book on botany would have read 
for him. His naive confession of the fact 



342 



A Word for Books 



makes his essays often truly pathetic, and 
in their pathos Hes a plain lesson for others. 
The best of his words to remember are : 
Once you wish to identify plants there is 
nothing escapes ; and to these everyone 
who has seriously tried to identify plants 
will add : They can be identified only by a 
study of botany ; no study is more pleasur- 
able; and none is easier up to the point 
where the mere lover of natural beauty may 
be content to abandon it. 

Materials for the study of botany are 
everywhere at hand ; no travelling is need- 
ed, and no great exertion. The essential 
tools are few and cheap. A couple of vol- 
umes, like Gray's " Manual " and " Hand- 
book, will give all needful introductory 
knowledge, full descriptions of all plants 
within a very wide area, and a glossary of 
terms to assist weak memories. With a 
knife, a long pin, and a common magnify- 
ing-glass the student has all he wants, unless 
he wants to end by being really a botanist. 
A few weeks of work with living things to 
illustrate the printed text — and of work 
w^hich will seem quite like play — and any- 



343 



Art Out-of-Doors 



one will be able to identify all the plants 
in the neighborhood of his home, except 
grasses and mosses and such small fry. 

I know that what I say is true, because it 
is not long since I made the experiment 
myself. I did not want to make it, for I 
was very busy in other ways ; and, while I 
never was so foolish as to think that I 
should enjoy less by learning more, I did 
not even dimly imagine how much more I 
should enjoy by learning a very little. 
Compelled by a wisely insistent friend to 
open my botany, I was amazed to fmd that 
the identifying of plants was quite as amus- 
ing and a great deal easier than the reading 
of verbal puzzles ; that when one was iden- 
tified it became like a personal possession, 
doubly beautiful, doubly interesting; and 
that as soon as I had identified a few, the 
whole aspect of the summer world was 
changed for me. It was as though all my 
life I had gone with veiled eyes among peo- 
ple whose language I could not speak, and 
now the veil had been lifted and the lan- 
guage explained. I really saw the things 
that were before me — the little as well as 



344 



A Word for Books 



the big things, and every part and pecuhar- 
ity of the biggest ones ; and I really began 
to appreciate them, to recognize their pe- 
culiar beauties, to feel the charm of their 
personalities. The green tangle by the 
roadside which, before, I had seen as a 
pretty tangle merely, now became a lovely 
intertwining of a dozen different shrubs and 
vines ; and it was only Avhen each thus be- 
gan to speak for itself to the eye that the 
composite beauty of the group was mani- 
fest. 

You must notice each plant if you 
want to understand its intrinsic beauty or 
its value in combination with others; to 
notice it you must w^ant to know it j and 
you are not likely to want to know any- 
thing until you begin to try in some sys- 
tematic fashion. Once systematically be- 
gun in the pages of your book, the botany- 
lesson continues in your walks and drives, 
soon without any definite effort — ^just be- 
cause of the new sharpness which a new de- 
gree of attention has quickly developed in 
your eyes. When this outdoor lesson has 
gone on for a while you will know by sight, 

345 



Art Out-of-Doors 



even afar off as you get the merest glimpse 
of them, all the easily visible plants near 
your home ; and then the fruit of the les- 
son has become a part of your life, a part of 
yourself, a new sense, a new apartment 
opened in your brain. It means not only 
special knowledge of special plants, but 
much keener vision, more delicate powers 
of appreciation, a more subtile and yet a 
broader and richer faculty of enjoyment. 
And thus it is a thing that you will carry 
with you forever after, wherever you may 
go. Now for the first time you really love 
the beauty of Nature, because now for the 
first time you really see and understand the 
beauty of some of its component parts. 

My ovvui knowledge of botany is a smat- 
tering indeed, and part of it I forget from 
one summer to another. But the fruit of it 
I would not exchange for any acquirement 
which has cost me a hundred-fold the amount 
of time and trouble. This cost me only 
such odd hours as I could spare each day 
during a single busy summer. It does not 
enable me to know a quarter of all the plants 
I see when I leave my own little corner of 

346 



A Word for Books 



the summer world ; but it does enable me 
really to see every plant which grows in any 
place, and really to appreciate its peculiar 
beauties. Even my poor little smattering 
has done so much for me, and even as re- 
gards pleasure of the most strictly aesthetic 
sort, that I wonder how anyone who has no 
smattering can think that he enjoys Nature 
at all. 

What is true with regard to botany is 
true, of course, in a similar way, with regard 
to geology. A smattering of geology will 
teach one only a very little about rocks and 
stones, and about the outlining and massing 
of the giant framiework over which Nature 
spreads her carpet of plants ; but even this 
very little knowledge, with the new sharp- 
ness of eye which will be its fruit, will make 
one's sense for the beauty of rock and soil- 
formations immeasurably broader and im- 
measurably more acute. 

The true lover of Nature," said Wilham 
Blake, can see a world in a grain of sand 
and heaven in a wild flower." But such a 
power of seeing is not given to many per- 
sons at their birth. Eyes are of very little 

347 



Art Out-of-Doors 



value to most of us until we have learned to 
use them. And the best way to learn to 
use our eyes is not idly to cast them about, 
even though this may give us pleasure, but 
to try to discover what there is to be seen 
in the world, and then to try to perceive it 
all. Only thus can we grow wise in Nat- 
ure's beauty ; but, I say, to grow wise in 
this sense we need not grow learned in a 
scientific sense. A mere smattering of 
knowledge, if it is accurate as far as it goes, 
will open the eyes to facts and the beauty of 
facts, and will make a solid basis for the fur- 
ther knowledge which will be almost uncon- 
sciously acquired. Once a little science has 
been learned in love," once the channels 
of the soul, the feeders of the imagination, 
have been opened to Nature's voice, we 
surely go on, by a process of instinctive see- 
ing, to a stage in aesthetic development 
which would never have been reached had 
we wandered idly about the world, thinking 
perhaps of beauty, but not thinking of the 
laws which govern it, or of the individuality 
of the myriad threads with which Nature 
weaves it on her mysterious loom. 

348 



XVII 
The Artist 



The goad mother Nature, when she g'ave many 
artes unto men, she made a difference also between 
their wittes and dispositions, tliat every one shoulde 
followe that whereunto he was most enclyned." 

^Petrarch. 

" If delight may provoke men's labour, what 
greater delight is there than to behold the earth as 
apparelled with plants, as with a robe of imbroid- 
ered worke, set with orient pearles. and garnished 
with great diversitie of rare and costly jewels ? . . 
The delight is great but the use greater, and ioyned 
often with necessitie." 

—John Gerarde. 



XVII 



N speaking thus about the cul- 
tivation of a love for natural 
beauty, I have by no means 
forgotten that the subject of 
my book is gardening art. 

An intelligent love for Nature is, in itself, 
a valuable possession, but it is an indispen- 
sable possession if we want to understand 
the aims and appreciate the results of the 
artist in gardening. It not only directs 
the eye insistently to the details of his work, 
but helps us to judge of it as a whole ; for 
if we have any artistic instinct at all, we 
cannot study Nature's particulars without 
noticing her broad effects. The better we 
see individual plants, the better we see the 
groups which they form in the foreground 
of a natural picture, and the compositions 
into which they fall when the eye takes 
a wider range. As each plant becomes 
specialized to the perceptive sense its con- 

351 




Art Out-of- Doors 



trast with its neighbors is appraised, and 
gradually we learn the laws upon which 
harmonies and discords depend, and realize 
what elements unite, and how they unite, 
to produce those different kinds of beauty 
which we call serious or pictureso^ue, digni- 
fied or lovely, delicate or effective. And 
then we are ready to use this developed 
taste in looking at the pictures wherein man 
has assisted Nature. 

Sterling's words are as true of this as of 
any other department of intellectual effort : 
^- Will is the root, knowledge the stem and 
leaves, and feeling the flower." A keen, 
sensitive, catholic and yet reasoning feeling 
for works of art must be developed if we are 
to comprehend and enjoy them fully. The 
first step toward understanding the beauty 
produced by an artistic re-uniting of Nat- 
ure's ^'scattered excellences," is to gain ac- 
quaintance with these excellences ] and the 
first step toward doing this is to unseal our 
eyes by lea^rning all that we can from books 
and pictures, from science and art. 

Few people in America, even among 
those who profess to love both Nature 

352 



The Artist 



and art, have cultivated themselves in this 
way. Indeed, as I said at the beginning 
of my first chapter, few even recognize 
the existence of gardening art as such. 
Most of them, I fear, think that a landscape- 
gardener is simply a combination of an en- 
gineer and a gardener in the ordinary sense. 
They know that he must understand hov/ to 
drain soils and conduct water, and how to 
build roads and make them convenient for 
private or public use : but they think that 
this is the whole of his work except to 
choose plants which are individually fine 
and place them where they will be individ- 
ually effective. They do not see him as 
an artist who, like the architect, considers 
beauty and utihty together, and knows that 
no amount of attention to details will pro- 
duce beauty unless all details are arranged in 
accordance with some broad artistic scheme 
— unless they express some clear artistic 
ideal. 

But the reform which has recently over- 
taken us with regard to architecture is evi- 
dently on its way along the sister path. 
The tasks offered to the few real artists in 



353 



Art Out-of-Doors 



gardening whom we possess are much more 
numerous now than they were even ten 
years ago, and also much more varied. The 
management of very small as well as very 
large undertakings is more and more often 
confided to them instead of to chance, or 
to the untutored taste of a horticulturalist 
or an engineer. We have learned not to 
confound an architect with a builder, or 
with the carpenter who can construct pretty 
rustic seats and arbors ; and soon, perhaps, 
we shall be wise enough not to confound 
a landscape-gardener with a mere grower 
of plants, or the tasks of the one with those 
of the other. 

One great enterprise of the moment will, 
I am sure, have a very potent influence to- 
ward this end. I mean the World's Fair 
at Chicago. In its general aspect and 
judged from the artistic point of view, it 
is much more successful than any large 
exhibition of the past ; yet the difficulties 
w^hich always exist in such vast undertak- 
ings were in this case increased by the need 
absolutely to create a suitable site. This 

354 



The Artist 



site was created by Mr. Olmsted ; in dis- 
posing it he determined the grouping of 
the chief buildings ; and the result of his 
and our architects' skill is a Fair which is 
not only comparable to the great Parisian 
one of 1889, and not only equal to it, but 
greatly superior. 

Its excellence, moreover, has not been 
achieved by the imitation or even the adap- 
tation of any precedent, but upon entirely 
new and original lines. Man had here to 
conquer Nature in one of her most recalci- 
trant moods — to undo her work, controvert 
her intentions, and produce something for 
which, in an artistic sense, she had not pre- 
pared. But, having conquered her, the 
result is more admirable as v^^ell as more 
individual than has been any analogous re- 
sult won by a less desperate struggle. It 
seems a miracle that an architectural pano- 
rama of such size and splendor can have 
sprung into life in the short space of two 
years, and it is impossible to think that 
another spectacle of equal beauty will be 
created in our lifetime ; for in no other 
city will the designers of an exhibition 

355 



Art Out-of-Doors 



have at command the shores and waters 
of a veritable ocean, and to the use which 
has been made of these a very large part 
of the beauty as well as of the individu- 
ality of our Fair is due. 

Only a landscape-architect, and a very great 
one, could have foreseen how, by regulating 
that lake-overflov/ which seemed to others a 
fatally deterrent feature of the proposed site, 
he might turn a big, barren swamp into a 
palatial pleasure - ground — creating wide 
water-ways instead of avenues, using the ex- 
cavated earth to solidify the building-sites, 
varying the character of these sites and 
water-ways, thus preparing for formal, ar- 
chitectonic beauty in one portion of the 
grounds and for irregular, picturesque beauty 
in another portion, and yet so associating 
and harmonizing the two that the transition 
from straight quays and canals to the broken 
outlines of islands and lagoons might be- 
come the finest feature of the imposing 
whole. But Mr. Olmsted foresaw all this, 
and he and his associates have done it all ; 
and, moreover, while thus actually creating 
a large part of the Fair-grounds, they have 

356 



The Artist 



created a large part of the vegetation which 
clothes it, not only turfing and ornamenting 
the formal terraces, but covering their newly- 
made islands and lagoon-shores, in the short 
space of two seasons, with green growing 
things which look as though Nature had 
planted them a long time ago. 

I think that no individual success achieved 
on these Fair-grounds will be so fruitfully 
instructive as Mr. Olmsted's. Every visitor 
will see that, despite the practical character 
of the enterprise, artists were needed to 
manage it ; he will see that when architec- 
tural works are in question the ground -plan 
is of primary importance ; and also that in 
preparing it the architect requires the help 
of the landscape-architect. The example 
set by the organizers of the Fair in employ- 
ing ]\Ir. Olmsted at the very outset, and the 
enthusiastic recognition of his help expressed 
by all the artists of other kinds who have 
w^orked at the Fair, ought to bear immediate 
fruit all over the country, among private 
owners of domains wide or narrow, as wqW 
as among architects and public officials. 
One has only to fancy what a Fair at Chica- 



357 



Art Out-of-Doors 



go must have been without Mr. Ohiisted's 
preparatory aid, to understand how, in a 
corresponding degree, lesser enterprises may 
profit from similar aid. 

It seems, indeed, as though after a few 
years our great trouble might be, not a lack 
of work for the landscape-gardener, but a lack 
of landscape-gardeners to do all our work. 
The architectural profession, we are told, 
is rapidly growing over-crowded ; but its 
sister art counts hardly half a dozen profes- 
sors of repute, and a very scanty little band 
of aspirants. Yet the chances for employ- 
ment are already good in landscape-garden- 
ing, and are growing better year by year ; 
and surely there is no profession whatsoever, 
unless it be the landscape-painter's, which 
suggests to the imagination so dehghtful an 
existence. 

It offers the chance for a life spent largely 
out-of-doors, in which the love for Nature 
may be indulged, not as a casual refresh- 
ment, but as the very basis and inspiration 
for the day's work. An artist himself, the 
landscape-gardener works hand in hand with 

353 



The Artist 



the architect, and may feel as much pride as 
the architect when the one has beautifully 
set and shown what the other has beautifully 
built. Broad as is the mental field which 
the architect may encompass, the landscape- 
gardener's is still wider, touching the do- 
mains of natural science and of construc- 
tional science on the one hand, and the realm 
of idyllic poetry on the other. Andre 
says that to master this art one ought almost 
to be painter and poet as well as architect 
and gardener. But if one cannot actually be 
all of these, he may feel all their impulses, 
and may weave all their moods and inspira- 
tions into his own peculiar product. 

So truly is this craft an art that there 
seems, indeed, to be no artistic quality 
which it may not express. Color and com- 
position are the landscape-gardener's re- 
sources as they are the painter's, mass and 
outline almost as they are the sculptor's. 
And if he cannot, like the figure-painter 
and the dramatic poet, represent human 
emotions, he does more than the landscape- 
painter who represents some of the things 
which excite these emotions — he, the crea- 



359 



Art Out-of-Doors 



tor of landscapes, actually creates these 
things. Such beauties as the landscape- 
painter and the idyllic poet tell us about, 
he puts before our eyes. He owes them a 
debt for what their works may have taught 
him ; but he does not celebrate their work 
— it is for them to celebrate his. 

When we have studied his works in their 
best examples, when we understand their 
genesis as compounds of Nature and art, 
and realize the skill and imagination which 
were needed to make them seem, not arti- 
ficial compounds, but vital creations, then 
we may easily feel that nothing in the world 
is better worth celebrating. It is the right 
and property of all successful things, declares 
Emerson, to be for their moment the top 
of the world." Whatever we look at, un- 
derstandingly and lovingly, seems complete 
and self-sufficient, including and assimilat- 
ing all the powers of beauty. Then, he 
says, presently we pass to some other ob- 
ject which rounds itself into a whole as did 
the first ; for example, a well-laid garden ; 
and nothing seems v/orth doing but the 
laying-out of gardens." I wish that more 

360 



The Artist 



of our countrymen had Emerson's cathohc 
enthusiasm for beauty, if only because more 
of them might then determine upon this 
half-neglected art as the occupation of their 
lives. 

But in the practice of no art can all be 
poetry and pleasure, sentiment and a de- 
light in beauty ; and this one means much 
hard, practical, out-door work, and close ap- 
plication to preparatory office-tasks. Nat- 
ure fights in one way against her would-be 
improver as vigorously as in another she 
assists him, and human nature, in the shape 
of the client, is even more prone to hamper 
him than the architect ; for, while some 
people realize that they know nothing of 
architecture, very few will confess that they 
know nothing of out-door beauty, even in 
its artistic forms. 

The student of this art will never gain a 
mastery of beauty if he does not begin with 
very serious study of prosaic things. He 
must learn about road-building and drainage, 
about soils and exposures, about plants and 
the growing of plants, about the useful and 

361 



Art Out-of-Doors 



ornamental treatment of water, and the im- 
provement of gromid-surfaces. He must 
study art as art — for the broad principles 
which underlie all expressions of human 
thought by means of design. He must 
learn something of the painter's aims to lay 
a foundation for the right management of 
form and color, and a great deal more about 
the architect's aims and methods. Then, 
of course, he must systematically study the 
art of design as involved in the various 
problems which his own work may present. 
And he must cultivate his taste and store 
his memory by looking very carefully at 
Nature's finished problems and those of the 
masters of his craft, while he sharpens his 
perception of what not to do by analyzing 
the results of bunglers. 

As he does all this he will find that, while 
the other arts are useful to him, there is 
much they cannot teach. Think of color, 
for instance. When the landscape-painter 
wants a harmony he need plan for only one ; 
but the gardener must remember that his 
colors will alter week by week, and must 
plan so that the scene which is beautiful in 
362 



The Artist 



flowery May will be beautiful in green July, 
and not discordant in harlequin October. 
With form the labor is just as complicated. 
If a landscape-painter's scene composes well 
from one point of view it is good, for no 
other point of view exists. But the land- 
scape-gardener's scene is like a sculptor's 
figure in the round : it must be beautiful 
from as many points of view as encircling 
footsteps may reveal. 

Nor, while thinking chiefly of his general 
efl'ects, can the landscape-gardener ever sacri- 
fice his details to them, as a painter most 
laudably may. His public cannot be kept 
at a given distance. He cannot generahze 
his foreground and compel the eye to take 
chief account of w^hat lies beyond it ; or, on 
the other hand, make his foreground impor- 
tant by elaboration, generalize his middle 
distance, and think that layers of atmos- 
phere will forever veil his background. 
What is the background of a picture seen 
from this point will be the foreground of a 
picture seen from another point. Nothing, 
large or small, can anywhere be slurred. 
He must paint as with the brush of a Velas- 

363 



Art Out-of-Doors 



quez, but help Nature, at the same time, to 
paint well with her brush, more delicate 
than a Malbone's. 

Nevertheless, I cannot say too often that a 
study of the art of painting will help him. 
Read Sir Uvedale Price " On the Pictu- 
resque," if you do not believe me; or, to 
gain instruction from the other side of the 
world, hear what a Japanese friend of mine 
once said. All Japanese gardeners, he de- 
clared, are artists by training and profes- 
sion, yet they attempt to manage only small 
problems by themselves. ^' When a large 
problem is in question," he explained, 
^' anything like one of your public parks, 
the general scheme is always supplied by a 
painter." 

If the intending artist travels abroad he 
will find some good gardening work and 
a great deal that is bad. Much that once 
was good has perished or been seriously de- 
faced. This century has seen the art of 
landscape-gardening fall to a very low ebb in 
both France and England. Recently it has 
somewhat improved again. But even vv^hen 

364 



The Artist 



modern European work is good in general 
scheme, it is still more constantly marred 
than our own by the mistaken management 
of details. I have never seen a natural- 
istic park in England or France as free as 
is Central Park from ill-chosen, ill-placed 
horticultural features. Almost everyone is 
nearly as much defaced by them as the aver- 
age large American cemetery. All kinds of 
inartistic gardening devices which exist in 
America exist in all parts of Europe, and 
there are some European atrocities which 
have not yet been imported — for instance, 
those stiff flovrer-borders, stretched beneath 
shorn-off shrubberies, to which I have al- 
ready referred. 

When w^e find American clients, and some- 
times American artists, confusing the sig- 
nificance of the words landscape, park, 
home-grounds, garden, lawn, and trying to 
cram into one scheme the beauties proper to 
all ; ^yhen we see tropical plants flaunting on 
lawns which should bear nothing but grass 
and quiet shrubs, or intruding themselves 
into sylvan corners which should have a na- 
tive, natural, simple air ; when we shudder 

365 



Art Out-of-Doors 



at the gaudy vulgarity of our coleus-beds ; 
when we see pretty things huddled together 
in ugly masses, or ugly plants set in con- 
spicuous solitude, sure of admiration be- 
cause they are novelties — in all these cases 
we may comfort though not excuse ourselves 
by knowing that, over the water, we should 
see just the same things and even more of 
them. 

The most instructive things which Europe 
offers to an American eye are her exam- 
ples of architectonic gardening — the magnifi- 
cent formalities wrought by Le Xotre and his 
followers in France and Germany, the beau- 
tiful old semi -formalities of which many rel- 
ics still remain in Italy, and the small city 
squares which modern Frenchmen design so 
well. ]\Iost of Europe's best lessons in nat- 
uralistic gardening can, I think, now be read 
in Germany. Some admirable work of this 
sort has recently been designed in France. 
But in France it is, perhaps, more often in- 
jured than in Germany by the introduction 
of inharmonious details. And certainly the 
fine traditions of the so-called English style 
have been much better and more generally 
see 



The Artist 



preserved in Germany than in England it- 
self. I think, however, that they are iUus- 
trated best of all in our own country, as re- 
gards the noblest problems ; and for many 
other reasons travel here is more indispensa- 
ble to the student than travel abroad. 

Nature herself speaks more directly and 
variously in America than in Europe, and, 
on the other hand, many of our artistic 
problems are peculiar to ourselves. Most of 
our country houses are differently built, 
placed, and surrounded from those of other 
countries. Our large parks and private do- 
mains are often laid out upon virgin soil in- 
stead of upon sites which have been used for 
other purposes, while in the west of Europe 
such a thing as a virgin site hardly exists. 
Our cemeteries are distinctive. Our cities 
are planned in local ways ; and, in general 
idea and details of arrangement, our vil- 
lages and summer-colonies are like no oth- 
ers. Add those fundamental diversities in 
soil, climate, vegetation, and atmospheric ef- 
fect which the artist can never for a moment 
forget, and it will be clear why his first 
travelling should be done in his own country. 

367 



Art Out-of-Doors 



In Europe he should travel if he can, but 
here he must travel : and only when he has 
thus learned what kind of work is v\'anted 
here, and what can well be accomplished 
here, wull he be fitted to gather useful in- 
formation abroad. 

He will find many deplorable things along 
his home-course. But shocking examples 
are very useful object-lessons if analyzed 
for their reasons why ; and with a multi- 
tude of such examples exist many delight- 
ful things — more, in certain directions, than 
we can find elsewhere. If we have had but 
few professed landscape-gardeners, we have 
had two or three of signal abihty ; and the 
untutored instinct of our people has some- 
times worked as simply and fehcitously as it 
has in England. Only in England, for in- 
stance, can we find a certain type of close- 
built village street, with walls embowered 
in vines and clasped by blossoming fruit- 
trees, and lovely, odorous cottage-gardens. 
But only in America can we find the typ- 
ical New England village, with its deco- 
rous, isolated vrhite houses flanking broad, 
turf-bordered streets which lie, like vast 
368 



The Artist 



cathedral aisles, completely over-arched by 
giant elms and maples ; and this also is a 
sight that one might travel far to see. 

Good planning, we know, is the foun- 
dation of all good gardening art. Impor- 
tant in the smallest problem, it is trebly 
important in large ones ; and nothing in the 
world is so instructive with regard to good 
planning on a very large scale as are our great 
public parks. In them, I think, we can 
learn more about the highest principles of 
landscape-gardening than Europe could 
teach. When a student can really appreci- 
ate all the excellence of one of Mr. Olm- 
sted's parks, when he really understands its 
creator's ideals and methods, he has- done 
much to fit himself for his own future work. 
Small problems are not very illuminative 
with regard to great ones ; but the way in 
which great ones have been managed — as a 
whole and in their several parts — may be 
infinitely helpful with regard to the smallest ; 
that is to say, if the student alwaj^s bears in 
mind that, in his art as in the architect's, 
the virtue of virtues is fitness. 



369 



Art Out-of-Doors 



Among all our parks Central Park is the 
most interesting and instructive. One or 
two others may be counted more beautiful, 
but this is because their sites were much 
more advantageous. The difficulties which 
attended the formation of Central Park give 
it its peculiar value. No harder task than 
the creation of a big pleasure-ground in the 
centre of the Island of Manhattan can ever 
be suggested to a landscape-gardener ; and, 
therefore, when its success is appraised, it 
teaches, like the Chicago Fair-grounds, the 
important lesson : Never despair. More- 
over, while the broken, rocky character 
of its surface offered comparatively little 
chance for such wide and stately effects 
as delight us in Prospect Park, in Frank- 
lin Park, and in the South Park at Chi- 
cago, it was extremely favorable (given an 
extremely able artist) to the production of 
varied beauty in details. So this park 
shows, in a striking way, how broad beauty 
may be compassed under seemingly deter- 
rent conditions, and at the same time of- 
fers an unusual assortment of those smaller 
beauties which are all that the landscape- 



370 



The Artist 



gardener can attempt in most of his small 
problems. 

Of course, no amount of looking at good 
results and studying backward the process- 
es through which they were produced will 
train a student in the same way as would a 
course of subordinate effort upon similar 
tasks while they are actually in hand. Such 
a course depends upon the chance to enter 
an office like Mr. Olmsted's ; and if this 
chance presents itself, no desire for travel or 
for study of other sorts should be allowed to 
interfere with it. 

But there ought to be other opportunities 
for at least a theoretical training in creative 
work. We ought to have a school of garden- 
ing art. To-day, if a man wants to study 
this art he must usually be his own master. 
He can study painting, architecture, en- 
gineering, botany, and horticulture in this 
school or in that ; or all of them, perhaps, 
at one university. But the art of design as 
applied to landscape, and as including the 
needful amount of instruction in these prac- 
tical branches, is nowhere taught in Amer- 

371 



Art Out-of-Doors 



ica. Nor do I think that it is in France 
or in England, although some more or less 
efficient teaching of it is probably practised 
in Germany. 

It is time, indeed, that we had a good 
school of gardening art in America, If we 
had, I believe that many young men would 
enter it ; and we need the services of very 
many. It would not cost much to de- 
velop such a school in connection with a 
university where some of its main prepar- 
atory branches are already taught ; and I 
hope the day is not far off when some pub- 
lic-spirited citizen will awaken to the need 
and meet the cost. 

Meanwhile, here is a motto which I should 
like to see engraved over the door of every 
architectural school in America for the in- 
struction of students, and of every architect's 
office for the warning of clients. Bacon set 
it down nearly three hundred years ago, but 
neither the architect nor his public has 
learned it yet: ''He that builds a fair 
house upon an ill seat commifteth himself to 
prison.'^ He may find pleasure within his 

372 



The Artist 



four walls ; but if he is a man of taste, he 
is shut off from pleasure the moment he 
crosses his threshold or looks from his win- 
dow. 

Think of this, good architect, before you 
begin your fair house, and plead the cause of 
your brother artist. Think of it, good cli- 
ent, before you decide just what kind of a 
fair house you want, and do. not ask counsel 
of your architect only. And when you have 
secured your landscape-gardener as well as 
your architect, do not obtrude too much of 
your ignorance into the plans which their 
skill may provide for you. Know what you 
want and ask for that ; and then be content 
with that and do not expect, when the 
work is half done, that you can change its 
character as easily as you can change your 
mind — or as cheaply. Architectural work 
and gardening work, if they are good, may 
cost a great deal of money ; but the com- 
plaints we so often hear with regard to their 
price are frequently explained by the fact that 
the client has tried to get first this thing and 
then that, and both at the cost of one. 

Human nature has not changed much in 

373 



Art Out-of-Doors 



the course of thousands of years. ^^In the 
magnificent city of Ephesus/' wrote Vitru- 
viuSj nearly nineteen centuries ago, there 
was an ancient law, hard indeed, but equi- 
table, to the effect that when an architect 
was entrusted with the execution of a pub- 
lic work, an estimate thereof being lodged 
in the hands of a magistrate, his property 
was held as security until the work was fin- 
ished. If, when finished, the expense did 
not exceed the estimate, he was compli- 
mented with degrees and honors. So when 
the excess did not amount to more than one- 
fourth of the estimate, no punishment was 
inflicted. But when the excess was greater 
than this amount the aixhitect was required 
to pay it out of his own pocket. Would 
that such a law existed among the Roman 
people, not only in respect of their public, 
but also of their private buildings, for then 
unskilful architects would not commit their 
depredations with impunity, and only those 
who were the most skilful in the intricacies 
of the art would practise it. Proprietors 
would not be led into ruin through extrava- 
gant expenditure. Architects themselves 

374 



The Artist 



would be constrained to closer accuracy in 
their calculations, and the proprietor would 
complete his building for the amount, or a 
little more than the amount, which he ex- 
pected to expend. Those who can afford 
a given sum for any work would cheerfully 
add one-fourth more in the pleasing expec- 
tation of seeing it completed ; but when 
they find themselves burdened with the 
addition of half, or even more than half, 
the expense originally contemplated, they 
lose heart, and are wilhng to sacrifice what 
has been already laid out." 

Thus we see that the Romans were a 
good deal like ourselves, and that the 
wonderful legal system of Rome, like the 
modern American system, failed to cover 
all possible contingencies of dispute. How 
far an artist is justified in exceeding the 
estimates agreed upon at the outset of his 
labors is a question still as frequently dis- 
cussed as it was in the time of Augustus. 
Clients still protest that they are robbed 
when they have to spend more than they 
anticipated ; and doubtless artists then 
claimed, as they do to-day, that they 

375 



Art Out-of-Doors 



may be so hampered as to destroy the 
artistic value of their work if a rigorous 
adherence to the first bargain is enforced. 

It is, of course, difficult to say upon which 
side the blame more often rests. There are 
certainly artists in this time and land who 
lack conscience of any kind and commit 
depredations ' ' upon the pockets of their 
chents without the excuse of giving them 
a superior piece of vrork in return for its 
extra cost. There are others who, while 
their artistic conscience is highly devel- 
oped, have little pecuniary conscience : 
they honestly desire to give their client 
work of the highest quality, but they fail 
to remember that they are likewise bound 
to respect his pocket, and, if needful, to 
show him that he cannot have the best for 
the price he is wiUing to pay. 

On the other hand, clients too often 
insist on having the best without regard 
to cost, and afterward grumble about the 
cost ; or, a price once settled upon, they 
alter their demands without sufficiently 
considering that this may mean unavoidable 
increase in price. The task of a designer, 

376 



The Artist 



whether his problem be to build a house 
or to lay out a park or garden, is very 
complicated, involving outlays, not only 
for actual construction, but for prepara- 
tory study, superintendence, and the ofQce- 
work of subordinates, which are rarely 
taken into account by the client, who 
thinks he has only to pay for stone and 
brick, soil and trees, and their actual 
manipulation. Every change from the plan 
first settled upon brings a new necessity 
for such outlays, even if it does not make 
needful the undoing of work already ac- 
complished, or the adoption of a scheme 
intrinsically more costly. ^^He keeps ab- 
solutely within his estimates if you do not 
change your mind," I heard a client say 
of a well-known architect not long ago, 
^ ' but he is very extravagant if you change 
it." The truth was that her change of 
mind had meant the need for renewed 
study on the architect's part as well as 
more expensive features in the house. 

The only way to keep within the sum 
you have named," rephed one of her 
hearers, ^' is to go abroad as soon as the 

377 



Art Out-of-Doors 



contract is signed, and not come back 
uutil the house is finished." The cause 
of many unfortunate disputes was certainly 
implied in this bit of advice. 

While there is reason, then, for insisting 
that the artist should be more conscientious 
as to expenditure, the client ought also to 
reform his habits. There are a few rules 
which should be heeded by every person 
about to build or to lay out a country place : 
Take plenty of time to decide, in consulta- 
tion with the artist, just what it is you want. 
See that he understands you clearly, leaving 
no question of importance open for hasty 
deciding as the work progresses. Then 
think no more about it, except to watch, if 
you will, lest through misunderstanding or 
carelessness something not in the bond is 
being done. Or, if you must change your 
mind, ascertain what the act will cost you, 
and decide before it is too late whether 
you will assume the additional expense or 
not. Do not think that a few little altera- 
tions " will be of no consequence. Probably 
those which seem little to you will not be 
little from the artist's point of view, or in a 

378 



The Artist 



pecuniary sense. If, however, you cannot 
decide upon what you want, hand over your 
house or your grounds to a reputable artist, 
name the sum you are wilhng to spend, and 
let him manage as he sees best — in which 
case you must not interfere at a later stage. 
And, finally, if you refuse to follow either of 
these modes of procedure, but give vague 
directions in the beginning, or recklessly 
change your mind from time to time, or in- 
terfere when you have granted the artist a 
free hand, do not grumble at the sum you 
may eventually have to pay. 

Indeterminate orders and loose bargains 
never result well as regards either product or 
price, and it is the client's own fault if they 
are made. If the orders are clear, and the 
bargain hard and fast, and if then you are 
asked for any important increase in price, 
the law will protect you as it would in a 
bargain of another sort. But it is instruc- 
tive to remember that, in almost every case 
where client and architect have recently 
come into our courts, it is the architect 
whose claim has been sustained. When 
deaUng with an artist, many men, honorable 



379 



Art Out-of-Doors 



and fair in other business matters, seem to 
think that they have a right to get something 
for nothing, or more for a given price than 
was promised them. This proves that as yet 
we do not value art as we do other commod- 
ities, or reahze that the work of a man's 
brain has a definite marketable worth. If 
we estimated art as it deserves — high 
above any merely connriercial product— we 
should, indeed, even feel wilhng to pay more 
for what we get than was at first decided. 
No artist, be he ever so conscientious, can 
at the outset tell to a dollar what a large and 
complicated piece of work will cost ; and if 
we deprive him of the right to a reasonable 
margin of excess, we may fatally injure his 
work and thus commit a crime against him 
and against the art he serves. 

Few clients to-day would welcome a law 
bidding them stand ready to add one-fourth 
to the prices named in their contracts ; a 
very much smaller increase almost always 
gives rise to angry protestations. On the 
other hand, if our architects and landscape- 
gardeners were asked to fix a legal margin 
for increase of cost, they would probably be 

389 



The Artist 



content with less than twenty-five per cent. ; 
often though they may exceed their esti- 
mates, it is rarely to the amount of fifty per 
cent., miless the client himself is very seri- 
ously at fault. Vitruvius thought twenty- 
five per cent, strict measure for the architect. 
Modern communities would regard it as hard 
measure for the client. And so may we not 
feel that nineteen centuries have improved 
the architect more than the client, and that 
it especially behooves the latter to look to his 
own heart ? 

If you are not a client but a working 
amateur, then you can plan and begin, re- 
consider and change, pay and pay again, 
with no one but yourself to blame. But you 
should still cultivate your artistic conscience. 
You should try to plan so carefully that you 
will not need to change, and so well that 
you will never grudge the cost. 

The wise Goethe tells you how not to 
work in one passage of that charming ac- 
count of a landscape-gardening enterprise 
which occurs in his Elective Affinities." 
As a rule, he says, the amateur cares more 

3S1 



Art Out-of-Doors 



about doing something than about the thing 
that is to be done. Having a preference 
for some particular spot^ he experiments with 
Nature. He does not dare to remove this 
detrimental feature or that — he is not bold 
enough to sacrifice anything. He cannot 
picture to himself in advance what his result 
should be. He makes an attempt, and he 
succeeds or fails. Then he alters — alters, 
perhaps, what ought to remain, and leaves 
what ought to be altered. And thus at the 
last his work always seems a fragmentary 
thing — pleasing and suggestive, but never 
satisfying. ' ' 

Certainly it can never be satisfying ; and 
almost always it will be pleasing only to an 
uncultivated eye, and suggestive only of a 
beauty which might have been. 

Two qualities," says Andre, usually 
distinguish professional from amateur pro- 
ductions — simplicity and breadth of treat- 
ment." Remember this, and you will have 
a steady guide-post, warning you away from 
the pitfalls into which you are most likely to 
step. If your garden has not simplicity and 
breadth of effect, it is certain to be bad as a 

382 



The Artist 



work of art. But if it has both, it is pretty 
sure to be good ; for breadth means unity, as 
simplicity means harmony, of effect. Unity, 
harmony, and variety are the three essential 
qualities ; and Nature may be relied upon to 
give you variety enough, no matter how 
broadly and simply you do your own part of 
the work. 

383 



APPENDIX 
Books on Gardening Art 



*' They set great store by their gardens. . . . 
Their studie and deUgence herein comnieth not onely 
of pleasure, but also of a certain strife and conten- 
tion . . . concerning the trimming, husband- 
ing, and furnishing of their gardens ; everye man 
or his owne parte." 

— Sir Thomas More, 



BOOKS ON GARDENING ART 



O complete bibliography of books 
relating to the art of landscape- 
gardening existed in our lan- 
guage, or, I think, in any other, 
until one was compiled, three years ago, by 
Henry Sargent Codman, the young land- 
scape-gardener who died last winter, and 
whose monument is the work he did, under 
Mr. Olmsted's direction, on the Fair-grounds 
at Chicago. This hst is a long one, cover- 
ing all the books in English, French, Ger- 
man, and Italian of which Mr. Codman 
could learn in American and foreign libra- 
ries, and which are of later date than Bacon's 
famous essay. During the last two centuries 
few books about formal gardening have been 
written ; and the earlier literature of this 
branch of the art must be sought chiefly in 
works upon architecture, the connection be- 
tween the two crafts being, of course, very 
close before the development of naturalistic 

387 




Art Out-of -Doors 



methods, and the architect's training being 
rightly thought incomplete without some 
knowledge of gardening design. 

Mr. Codman's Hst was published in Vol. 
III. (1890) of Garden and Forest, and from 
it I have selected the names of such books 
and essays, among those of greatest value to 
the general reader, as are most likely to be 
within his reach. As a supplement to this 
little borrowed catalogue I have added the 
names of a few interesting books which Mr. 
Codman did not mention, either because 
they are of later date than his list, or be- 
cause they did not fall quite within its scope. 

The dates prefixed to the titles of the 
books were given by Mr. Codman as those 
of the first editions. Where I have affixed 
an " Etc.," it implies that other works by 
the same author, published in other years, 
are also valuable. I have marked as Amer- 
ican " a few works written by our own au- 
thors which in their titles do not indicate 
this fact. 

Pliny's delightful descriptions of Roman 
gardens, Bacon's, Pope's, and Addison's 

388 



Appendix 



essays, ought to be on the shelf of everyone 
who loves either good gardens or good liter- 
ature. Temple, Walpole, Whately, the elder 
Gilpin, Price, and Repton are EngHsh au- 
thors indispensable to the American ama- 
teur of gardening or friend of Nature. 
Downing, the father of American landscape- 
gardening, should of course be especially 
honored ; and in addition to those books of 
his which occur in the following list, I can 
recommend, as filled with interesting and 
instructive reading, the bound volumes of 
the Horticulturaltst^ a magazine which 
he conducted for seven years, and which, 
when his untimely death in 1852 meant its 
death also, had no worthy American suc- 
cessor until Garden and Forest was estab- 
lished. Downing's ideas upon rural archi- 
tecture are not always to be commended, 
but no wiser or pleasanter pen than his has 
written about the art of landscape-gardening. 

Edouard Andre's is, I am sure, the best 
modern practical treatise upon gardening art 
which exists in any language, and it is very 
interesting to the general reader as showing 
how an artist works, and well explaining the 

389 



Art Out-of-Doors 



principles of catholic good taste. Jager's is, 
perhaps, the best historical work, although it 
hardly touches upon early periods, and is not 
altogether trustworthy with regard to later 
ones. In the pages of Garden and Fo7'cst 
(Vols. 11. and III., 1889 and 1890) I tried 
myself to sketch an outline of the history of 
the art of gardening, and covered, as best 
I could, the earlier periods, about which 
little (indeed I may say nothing of a de- 
tailed and systematic sort) had been writ- 
ten. For later times the materials are much 
more abundant, but the day has not yet 
come when I could carry on my little survey 
so as to cover them also. 

As to books which inculcate a loving ob- 
servation of natural beauty, I must cite again 
those of Thoreau especially, and of Jefferies 
and Burroughs ; refer to Wordsworth and to 
Emerson \ note Sir John Lubbock's Beau- 
ties of Nature ' ' and Professor Shaler's 

Aspects of the Earth and add the names 
of Charles C. Abbott, William Hamilton 
Gibson, Bradford Torrey, Hamilton Wright 
j\Iabie, and Wilson Flagg — all American 
writers of to-day. Valuable help tovrard 

390 



Appendix 



making acquaintance with our trees may be 
found in George B. Emerson's Trees and 
Shrubs of Massachusetts," Apgar's Trees 
of the Northern United States," and Charles 
S. Newhall's Trees of Northeastern 
America," as well as in Professor Charles 
Sprague Sargent's monumental Silva of 
North America," four of the twelve volumes 
of which have now been published. 



1625. Francis Bacon: Of Gardens." 
(Essays.) 

1689. Sir William Temple : On the 
Gardens of Epicurus ; or, of Gardening in 
the year 1685." 

1713. Alexander Pope: ^^An Essay 
on Verdant Sculpture." (^The Guardian, 
No. 173.) Etc. 

1 7 14. Joseph Addison: ^^Description 
of a Garden in the Natural Style." {The 
Spectator, No. 477.) Etc. 

1728. Batty Langley : New Princi- 
ples of Gardening." 

391 



Art Out-of-Doors 



1737- J- Blondel : De la distri- 
bution des Maisons de Plaisance." 

1753. M. A. Laugier: ^^De TEmbel- 
lissement des Jardins. " (^^ Essai sur T Archi- 
tecture," chap, vi.) 

1762. Henry Home (Lord Kames) : 

Gardening and Architecture." (^^ Ele- 
ments of Criticism," Vol. II.) 

1762. Horace Waipoi e : A History 
of the Modern Taste in Gardening." Etc. 

1764. William Shenstone : '^Uncon- 
nected Thoughts on Gardening." (Col- 
lected Works, Vol. II.) 

1765. Jacques Delille : Les Jar- 
dins; ou I'Art d'embellir les Paysages." 

1768. George Mason : ''An Essay on 
Design in Gardening." 

1770. Thomas Whateley (or Wheat- 
ley) : " Observations on Modern Garden- 
ing." (First published anonymously. The 
best edition is that of 180 1, edited by Wai- 
poie, and including an essay " On the Dif- 
ferent Natural Situations of Gardens " by 
G. J. Parkyns.) 

1772. Sir William Chambers: "A 
Dissertation on Oriental Gardening." Etc. 

392 



Appendix 



1772. William Mason: ^^The Eng- 
lish Garden." (A Poem.) Etc. 

1774. Claude Henri Watelet : Es- 
sai sur les Jardins." 

1776. J. M. Morel : " Theorie des Jar- 
dins." (First published anonymously.) 

1777. Rene Gerardin (or Girardin) : 
De la Composition des Paysages." 

1779 1785. C. C. L. HiRSCHFELD : 

Theorie der Gartenkunst. " 
1781. Prince Charles de Eigne : 
Coup-d'oeil sur Bel-CEil, et sur une 
grande partie des Jardins de 1' Europe." 

1785. William Marshall: Planting 
and Ornamental Gardening." 

1786. William Gilpin: ^^Observa- 
tions relative chiefly to Picturesque Beau- 
ty." Remarks on Forest Scenery." 
Etc. 

1794. Sir Uvedale Price : An Essay 
on the Picturesque as Compared with the 
Sublime and the Beautiful, and on the Use of 
Studying Pictures for the Purpose of Improv- 
ing Real Landscape." (The best edition is 
^' Sir Uvedale Price on the Picturesque, 
with an Essay on the Origin of Taste and 

393 



Art Out-of-Doors 



much Original Matter," edited by Sir 
Thomas Dick Lauder, 1842.) Etc. 

1793. Humphrey Repton : ^^Observa- 
tions on the Theory and Practice of Land- 
scape Gardening." Etc. 

1805. Richard Payne Knight : An 
Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of 
Taste." Etc. 

1807. Curten : ^^Essai sur les Jar- 
dins." 

1812. J. C. Loudon: Hints on the 
Formation of Gardens and Pleasure 
Grounds." Etc. 

1819. Gabriel Thouin : Plans rai- 
sonnes de toutes les Especes de Jardins." 

1825. Richard Morris: Essays on 
Landscape Gardening and on uniting Pic- 
turesque Effect with Rural Scenery." 

1825. F. L. Von Sckell : Beitrage 
zur bildenden Gartenkunst." 

'1827. Sir Henry Steuart : ^^The 
Planter's Guide." 

1828. Sir Walter Scott: ^^On Or- 
namental Plantations and Landscape Gar- 
dening." (T/ie Quarterly Review, Vol. 
XXXVIL) 

394 



Appendix 



1832. William S.Gilpin: Practical 
Hints upon Landscape Gardening." 

1834. FuRST Hermann von PCxkler- 
MusKAU : Andeutungen iiber Land- 
schafts Gartnerei." 

1835. John Dennis: '^The Land- 
scape Gardener, comprising the History and 
Principles of Tasteful Horticulture," 

1835. N. Vergnaud: L'Art de 
creer les Jardins. ' ' 

1841. A. J. Downing: A Treatise on 
the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gar- 
dening, adapted to North America." (The 
best edition is the one edited, with supple- 
ments, by H. W. Sargent, 1875.) Rural 
Essays." Etc. 

1850. Edward Kemp: ^^How to Lay 
out a Small Garden." 

1852. Joshua Major: ^^The Theory 
and Practice of Landscape Gardening. ' ' 

1852. C. H. J. Smith: Parks and 
Pleasure Grounds; or. Practical Notes on 
Country Residences, Villas, Public Parks 
and Gardens. ' ' (American edition, enlarged 
by Lewis F. Allen, 1853.) 

395 



Art Out-of-Doors 



1855 — 1863. Le CoMTE DE Choulot: 
^^L'Art des Jardins." 

1858. Frederick Law Olmsted and 
Calvert Vaux: Description of a Plan 
for the Improvement of Central Park. ' ' Etc. 

1859. R. M. CoPELAND : ''Country 
Life; a Hand-book of Agriculture, Horti- 
culture, and Landscape Gardening." (Ameri- 
can.) 

1859. Charles FoLLEN : ''Suggestions 
on Landscape Gardening. ' ' (American. ) 

1 86 1 . R. SiEBECK : ' ' Die bildende Gar- 
tenkunst in ihren modernen Formen." 
(English translation, " Picturesque Garden 
Plans," by Joseph Newton, 1864; and an- 
other, "The Landscape Gardener," 1876.) 

1862. G. Meyer : "Lehrbuch der scho- 
nen Gartenkunst." 

1862. E. Petzold : "Die Landschafts 
Gartnerei." 

1864. L. Vitet: " De la theorie des 
Jardins." ("Etudes sur I'Histoire de 
PArt," Vol. IV.) 

1867. Charles Blanc : ' ' Les Jardins. ' ' 
(" Grammaire des Arts du Dessin," Book 
I., Chap, xxvl) 

396 



Appendix 



1868. A. Alphand : Les Prome- 
nades de Paris : Etude sur I'Art des Jar- 
dins.'^ 

1869. William Robinson : The Parks, 
Promenades, and Gardens of Paris." 

1870. F. J. Scott : The Art of Beau- 
tifying Suburban Home- Grounds of Small 
Extent." (Second edition, called '-Beauti- 
ful Homes.") (American.) 

1873. H. W. S. Cleveland: Land- 
scape xArchitecture as Applied to the Wants 
of the West." Etc. (American.) 

1873. William Hammond Hall : The 
Influence of Parks and Pleasure Grounds." 
(Report of the Engineer of the Golden Gate 
Park, San Francisco.) 

1877. H. Jaeger: Lehrbuch der Gar- 
tenkunst." 1885. Gartenkunst und Gar- 
ten Sonst und Jetzt." 

1879. Edouard Andre : L'Art des 
Jardins." Etc. 

1 88 1. Frederick Law, Olmsted : ^^A 
Consideration of the Justifying Value of a 
PubHc Park." Etc. (American.) 

1882. K. E. Schneider: ''Die schone 
Gartenkunst." 



397 



Art Out"0f-Doors 



1883. William Robinson : The Eng- 
lish Flov\-er Gai'den." Etc. 

18S4. W. P. TucKERMANN : Die Gar- 
tenkunst der Italienischen Renaissance- 
Zeit." 

1885. Jacob von Falke : ^'Der Gar- 
ten, seine Kunst und Kunstgeschichte. " 

1886. J. Conder: ^^The Art of Land- 
scape Gardening in Japan." (^Transactions 
of the Asiatic Society of Japaji, xiv.^ 

1890. Walter Howe: The Garden 
as Considered in Literature by Certain PoHte 
Writers; vrith a Critical Introduction." 
(American.) 



1884. E. V. B. (Mrs. Boyle.) ^'Days 
and Hours in a Garden." 

1885. Albert F. Sieveking : The 
Praise of Gardens." 

1887. W. Carevv Hazlitt: ^^Glean- 
ings in Old Garden Literature." 

1889. George H. Ellwanger : The 
Garden's Story." (American.) 

39S 



Appendix 



1890. H. E. Milner: The Art and 
Practice of Landscape Gardening. ' ' 

1891. Samuel Parsons, Jr. : ''Land- 
scape Gardening." (American.) 

1891. John D. Seddixg : ''Garden 
Craft Old and New." 

1892. Reginald Blomfield and F. 
Inigo Thomas: "The Formal Garden in 
England." 

1892. WiLLL-\M Robinson : " Garden 
Design and Architects' Gardens." 

1892. Mrs. Robbins : " The Rescue of 
an Old Place." (American.) 

1893. " Report of the [Metropolitan Park 
Commission of Boston. ' ' 



399 



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